I am not ignoring your point. They changed policy ten years ago to not make copies of birth certificates or marriage licenses. They decided to make a copy as an exception for the President of the United States of America. They made the copy and used an official stamp that they have for other stuff.Diogenes wrote: You are still ignoring my point. The Original verbiage has no wiggle room for modifying the document. The New verbiage allows the document to be changed, and there is no way to tell this has occurred. Since they are never CLAIMING it is an original record, they can't be held responsible for false witness.
The new stamp is used in cases of copies and abstracts. So, it applies to "copies" or "abstracts". In this case, it applies to a copy.
As far as wiggle room, they said publicly that this is a copy (one of two) so I am pretty sure that the "or abstract" wording of the stamp doesn't get them off the hook for anything.
As far as why they didn't use the old wording, I would say that the slip of paper that used to be slipped in the copier was lost when the policy changed. Since they didn't have any copies of copies laying around for reference, they probably weren't even aware of the old wording. They just used the stamp they have, which is quite reasonable, and called it a day.
This is so silly.