Who Is Shalifa A. Williamson?

That's why I thought I'd take a few minutes to document some information about a minor player in the article cited below.

Related:
The Theory is Now a Conspiracy And Facts Don't Lie

Almost anyone can become a Notary Public. Every state has a program to become a notary. You pass a test and agree to abide by the rules and you can become one.

In some states, attorneys are automatically entitled to be a notary. People who often become notaries are real estate agents and people involved in business service centers like copy and shipping businesses.

Notaries have an obligation to record in a journal every instance of the use of their seal. This is the reason that a notary is often used to witness the signing of documents like wills, deeds, and other documents that require authentication.

In order to serve as a witness to a signature, a notary is required to obtain a form of identification from the person whose signature is being notarized and that information is also recorded in the journal. Sometimes, the notary may also record a thumbprint.

Shalifa Williamson must, by law, have recorded in her journal both instances of the use of her seal on the Democratic National Convention certifications.

So it would certainly be possible to determine from Ms. Williamson's journal whose signatures she notarized for what documents, although she may not have copies of the actual documents.

Ms. Williamson is a valid notary in Colorado. You can verify this at the Colorado Secretary of State web site.

To see what a notary is required to record in Colorado, here is an official sample journal.

This is what I was able to find about Ms. Williamson from public sources on the Internet.


Shalifa Ayana Williamson
Denver CO
Born: April 1973
Age: 36

Possible Addresses:
17934 Purdue Pl Aurora, CO 80013

3223 Hannibal St Aurora, CO 80013

3555 Richfield Way Aurora, CO 80013

3603 Richfield Cir Aurora, CO 80013

5058 Crystal Way Denver, CO 80239


Because I can't find a business listing for Ms. Williamson, my guess is that her notary is not a major source of her income. She may have been picked as the notary for the Democratic National Committee as a favor to her.

I doubt she'll cooperate and make her notary journal available without either a court or the Colorado Secretary of State requiring her to produce it.

But, you never know what her reaction might be to attempts to contact her.

She likely will have been totally oblivious to the controversy to which she was attaching her name. A notary, after all, doesn't even have to read the document or understand what it means. A notary's job is only to witness and authenticate the signatures.

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• The Case For Eligibility

ADDENDUM 8:38 P.M.

I saw the comments about notarizing two different documents.

At first I thought, that's not a big deal. A notary's job is to witness signatures and identify the signers.

I've reconsidered. This is why.

If a person were to bring to a notary two wills, the notary, knowing that the nature of the document was a will and knowing the importance of wills, should ask why the person wanted to notarize the same document twice. For a will, the original would important. If there are two originals, it would lead to uncertainty.

Well, if the person were to then point out that each will was different or if the notary learned this on their own, it seems that would raise a legitimate red flag -- two documents purporting to serve the same purpose but with different content.

In the case of the example wills, when the person died, which one would control? Would the keeper of the wills be in a position to put forward one or the other document based on some prior agreement with the testator? That seems to a potential ethical situation.

Replace a will with a land deed and the same ethical situation arises.

So, I agree. Ms. Williamson notarized two originals of a document of which she reasonably must have been apprised of its importance. I mean, she had the convention chairman, Nancy Pelosi, in front of her, probably telling her to do it. Two originals would be suspicious, at the very least. Was the question raised? Did Ms. Pelosi give her an explanation? Very interesting.

I don't know what the law in Colorado is on this situation, but it certainly would be something that would be interesting to know.

Does anyone have the official handbook for notaries in Colorado? I imagine other states' notary handbooks would shed some light, but Colorado's would be definitive.

ADDENDUM #2 2009-09-13 2:50 P.M.

Upon learning more information, I'm going to retract the speculation that Ms. Williamson was on notice of something suspicious in notarizing two similar documents.

There is an excellent blog by jb that is, apparently, the source of the Canada Free Press article. In that blog, jb writes that Hawaii is the only state that requires a party certification to affirmatively certify that the candidates are eligible under the Constitution.

Therefore, if the notary had asked, a reasonable explanation for the two versions of the document is that Hawaii requires the additional language.

While that leaves Ms. Williamson off the hook because the explanation is both true and reasonable, it does not explain why two documents were necessary. While Hawaii required the additional language, no other state would have rejected the certification because of the additional language.

So, the strategy appears to have been to provide the most minimal certification necessary to the states. That's what a lawyer would advise to limit exposure to liability.

As one commenter in jb's blog suggests, it would be interesting to locate the certifications used by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) for Bill Clinton (1992 and 1996), Al Gore (2000), and John Kerry (2004) to establish whether the DNC was just following its customary procedure or whether the Obama (2008) certifications were a change in the DNC's custom. If there was a change, perhaps it was a change we can believe in. But then again, perhaps not.

Somehow, the fact that Hawaii, alone among the fifty States, requires this language strikes me as fitting. Without Hawaii's law, there would have been no reason for the different versions. Karma? Poetic justice?