They gave a copy (a partial copy, as the portion of the "original" which contains medical information about the mother and infant is not released to requestors ever) to Obama in 2011. And that copy was scanned to the WH webpage.
I'm not seeing the dodge. I have, though, seen the exasperation expressed by State officials at the repeated requests, to the point they simply directed further inquirers via link to the White House page.
Try your argument on them, because they are the ones insisting on making the distinction.
"(b) A verification shall be considered for all purposes certification that the vital event did occur and that the facts of the event are as stated by the applicant."
Why would I argue with Hawaii when it's clear to me that, from Hawaii's perspective, they've affirmed Obama's birth there in multiple ways through multiple persons? And I can understand why -- given a long history of "goal post moving" by Birthers -- their doing anything further won't achieve anything. From Post 187:
“It’s crazy,” said Janice Okubo, director of communications for the Hawaii Department of Health. “I don’t think anything is ever going to satisfy them.”
Okubo, who said that she gets weekly questions from Obama ‘Birthers’ that are “more like threats,” explained that the certificate of live birth reproduced by Obama’s campaign should have debunked the conspiracy theories.
If Hawaii were today to issue or post a copy with the attestation "this is a true copy of the original record on file" I have NO doubt the Birther response would be "but this looks suspicious coming now so late in the game, we need to have document examiners allowed in to see the vault original." And if those document examiners were to report back and say "it looks legitimate" the Birther response would be "Oh, but they've been bribed or threatened; they were probably shown a photo of Loretta Fuddy and 'got the message.'" Okubo is right.
You're just one very noisy, incompetent loon flocking with a host of other loons.
Obama released this "document." If you contend that what Obama released is what Hawaii gave him, then they gave him an "abstract of the record on file", (meaning whatever has been put into the file for the last 50 years) not a certified copy of an "original" document.
We know this is so because they added that language "or abstract of the record on file" to the certification, which would not be necessary unless that was a real possibility.
In all cases in which someone certifies that something will be either a "bag of gold" *or* a "bag of sh*t", it's a safe bet that the bag will always contain sh*t.