Equal Opportunity to Govern Amendment
The Equal Opportunity to Govern Amendment, also known as the Hatch Amendment, is a United States constitutional amendment proposed in July 2003 by Senator Orrin Hatch to repeal the natural born citizen clause prohibiting citizens who were naturalized from holding the office of President or Vice President of the United States. Hatch's amendment would allow anyone who has been a US citizen for twenty years to seek these offices. In the wake of the California recall election, 2003, this proposal was widely seen as an attempt to make California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger eligible for the presidency and is sometimes nicknamed "Arnold Amendment" or "Amend for Arnold". However, there are other politicians who were not born as American citizens and therefore would benefit from such an amendment. Notables include former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm, former Florida Senator Mel Martinez, former United States Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former Vermont governor Madeleine Kunin, and current Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao. The text of the amendment reads as follows:
The amendment was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary. Hearings were held on October 5, 2004, two months before the end of the second session of the 108th United States Congress, but no further action was taken.
In 2015, the "Equal Opportunity to Govern Campaign" was set up to reintroduce Senator Hatch's original Equal Opportunity to Govern amendment. A petition was set up and a website released on October 9, 2015, to generate interest and support of the amendment so that it could be discussed in the new Judiciary Committee from a totally bipartisan perspective as opposed to previous efforts that had specific candidates in mind. As of 2019 the website eotg.org belongs to a new organization unrelated to the above-mentioned cause.
