Remember the 2000 presidential elections? Vice President Al Gore won the popular vote. However, for 31 days after the election, no one knew whether he or Texas Governor George W Bush had prevailed in Florida, winning the needed electoral votes that would determine the nation’s 43rd president. “Hanging chads” and the spectacular hair-do of Florida’s Secretary of State Kathleen Harris dominated the news as Republicans and Democrats took to the courts to determine the winner.Both sides filed three separate lawsuits. Finally, the most critical case of Bush versus Gore was decided by a five to four decision in the Supreme Court (SC). Divided along party lines, the decision stopped the recount of the hotly contested Florida vote that the Texas governor had won by the narrowest of margins. Bush was awarded Florida’s electoral votes and, on January 20, 2001, he became president.Could this happen again? To be elected president, there are four and only four qualifications. The person must be 35 years of age, have resided in the US for at least 14 years and win a majority of electoral votes; we still do not directly elect our presidents as Al Gore’s defeat confirmed. The fourth and final requirement is that the president must be “a natural born citizen”. In the specific context of the presidency, neither SC decisions nor case law have produced a definitive definition of what a natural born citizen means although the established law grants citizenship to the offspring of US citizens born abroad. The unresolved issue is whether, by extension, a foreign born US citizen is constitutionally qualified to become president.George Romney, former governor of Michigan and father of presidential aspirant Mitt, was born in Mexico. His campaign for the presidency quickly failed and hence the issue was untested. The 2008 election, however, raised this question of birthright for both candidates, Senators John McCain of Arizona and Barack Obama of Illinois. McCain was born in 1936 at Coco Solo Naval Station in the Canal Zone. Technically, Panama still maintained sovereignty over the Canal Zone although the US controlled it. Interestingly, McCain’s grandfather commanded the naval base and his father was executive officer of a submarine stationed there.In 2008, a New Hampshire resident, Fred Hollander, filed a lawsuit contesting McCain’s qualification for the presidency on the grounds that he was not “a natural born citizen” since the Canal Zone was technically not US territory. However, in 1937, Congress had passed a law that would have qualified such individuals to serve as president. In 2008, the Senate passed a non-binding resolution declaring McCain qualified as a natural born citizen. McCain lost and the point was moot. Of course, the brouhaha over candidate Obama’s place of birth became the rallying cry of right wing fringe elements. Obama was the child of a US mother and Kenyan father. That he was born in Hawaii made little difference to the “birthers”. However, this argument becomes hotter should Texas Senator Ted Cruz win the Republican nomination, no matter the likelihood.Cruz was born in Calgary, Ontario in Canada to a US mother and Cuban father. Eventually, the family moved to Texas. Cruz gave up his Canadian citizenship in 2014. Now suppose Cruz won the nomination. Is he constitutionally qualified to be president? Certain Republicans were happy in 2008 to challenge Obama’s natural born citizenship status with a US mother and foreign father, exactly the same situation for Mr Cruz. So how might they react to establishing the presidential qualifications of the firebrand senator? Since consistency and hypocrisy are two sides of the same political coin, no doubt the Republican Party (GOP) will ignore this contradiction. Yet it is interesting that this question of qualification has not arisen so far. Nonetheless, given the bizarre and bitter nature of US politics today and the relevance of a 226-year-old document to the 21st century, a repeat of Bush versus Gore in 2016 with a Cruz versus Constitution petition is not entirely unimaginable. The writer is chairman of the Killowen Group that advises leaders of government and business and senior advisor at Washington DC’s Atlantic Council. His latest book, due out this fall, is A Handful of Bullets: How the Murder of an Archduke a Century Ago Still Menaces Peace Today