". . . the Constitution prohibits States from imposing congressional qualifications additional to those specifically enumerated in its text. Petitioners' argument that States possess control over qualifications as part of the original powers reserved to them by the Tenth Amendment is rejected for two reasons. First, the power to add qualifications is not within the States' pre-Tenth-Amendment "original powers," but is a new right arising from the Constitution itself, and thus is not reserved. Second, even if the States possessed some original power in this area, it must be concluded that the Framers intended the Constitution to be the exclusive source of qualifications for Members of Congress, and that the Framers thereby "divested" States of any power to add qualifications."While this case dealt with term limits, there really is no distinguishing facts that would allow a different decision regarding presidential primaries. The Constitution does not provide for state enforcement of the "natural-born citizen" clause, so any enforcement will have to come from Congress.Nor can the Court agree with petitioners' related argument that (term limits are) a permissible exercise of state power under the Elections Clause, Art. I, 4, cl. 1, to regulate the "Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections." A necessary consequence of that argument is that Congress itself would have the power under the Elections Clause to "make or alter" a measure such as (term limits), a result that is unfathomable under Powell v. McCormick. Moreover, petitioners' broad construction is fundamentally inconsistent with the Framers' view of the Elections Clause, which was intended to grant States authority to protect the integrity and regularity of the election process by regulating election procedures, see, e.g., Storer v. Brown, 415 U.S. 724, 730 , 733, not to provide them with license to impose substantive qualifications that would exclude classes of candidates from federal office.
The Secretary of State certifies the candidates to the State Board. Secretary must certify Democratic and Republican Presidential candidates. In one lawsuit the secretary of state said they ASSUMED Obama had been vetted properly and they certified him because of that assumption. For the states to have done anything the time for that was before electoral votes. But also they have set themselves up for lawsuits for not properly vetting Obama.