Hmmm. I guess it just boils down to completely, utterly different family dynamics, then. In my family, being kin isn’t a free pass to be an asshole–it means you’re held to an even higher standard of non-assholishness than the average person. You act like an asshole to your family in spite of the relationship, you forfeit any claim to special treatment based on that relationship. In other words, one hearty “fuck you” deserves another.
The idea of family holding it against you if you turn this shitstain in, it boggles my mind as much as the idea of turning him in boggles other people’s minds.
And if Drain Bead doesn’t do anything and this does indeed somehow come back to bite her in the butt, what’s she supposed to do then? Lie to the authorities that she really didn’t know? Tell the truth and say she was afraid to turn him in for fear it would be uncomfortable for her within the family? Take all the heat no matter what to save said group’s feelings?
Finally, isn’t it an assumption that her family would jump her out over this? Because possibly, if the shit hit the fan, the fallout could end up directly in the lap of the one actually committing the crime. Just sayin’.
I thought that an advantage of my suggestion of telling him you’re going to turn him in was that there was a good chance that the threat alone would be a sufficient deterrent, and that it wouldn’t be necessary to follow through.
Doesn’t matter who he’s going to vote for, even if it were for the candidate I like. Fraud is fraud.
I sit him down for an earnest heart-to-heart talk, explain that what he intends to do is a crime, and emphasize that I don’t want either of us to get into trouble. I warn him that if he doesn’t show me written proof (by a reasonable deadline) that he’s changed his voter registration to reflect reality, I will have no choice but to turn him in. If he loves me as a close family member, as I love him, he won’t put me in that situation.
But if he does, I turn him in with a clear conscience.
I dunno, my wife continued to vote in Arizona after living in NYC for a while. She didn’t even think of it. She just never reregistered and kept filling out the absentee ballots. For a while she was much more connected to Arizona politics, and to a degree, still is.
I talked to a friend last night who voted absentee in Florida where she’s from even though she lives in NYC. Not out of an intention to be strategic about it, but just because that’s where she’s always been registered.
There is an aspect at work here culturally, where people are much more likely to move around, and sometimes maintain a connection to the politics of one area rather than another. It’s become frightfully complex.
I think a lot of people don’t think of this as the terrible calamity that many of you are portraying it as. It just reminds me of how when I thought Hillary might win, I’d register in New Mexico and vote for McCain. My friend was pissed off that I might commit voter fraud. When I talked about doing it for Obama, he said I should go for it.
I think the key point here that the whole “blood is thicker than water” posters here are forgetting is that the guy is involving her. He’s using HER address in order to do this. He could potentially get her mixed up in this whole scheme. And as she’s a lawyer as well, this has the possibility of blowing up in her face. So that’s an acceptable risk?
A question from an ignorant foreigner, if you’d indulge me:
How is it possible for someone to vote in a given district without ever proving that they actually live in that district? I haven’t been on the voters list in a long time (because I moved house a lot in the past few years), and I can vote by presenting photo ID and something with my name and address on it. So if this was in Canada, the OP’s family member could only use her address to vote if he had received mail at that address.
If things don’t work this way in the US, what’s to stop, say, me from using Drain Bead’s address to vote?
No one advocated doing nothing. We just felt that the rush to involve the state in familial matters was a bit excessive. Despite all the hyperbole there is little actual consequence in being used for voter fraud. If anything you can frame yourself as a victim. Also, as is quite obvious the DA is not going to use much of his budget to pursue individual cases such as these, and certainly is not going to spend budget trying to go after the family members of the offending party.
So when you argue to take the family member to task when the stakes are so low and the crime is so minor, it sounds pretty bad. If he is voting in both states that’s one thing, but I hardly see why voting in a state where you don’t normally reside but have a connection to is such a horrible thing.
In an eralier post I siad I would try and convince him that the almost zero chance his vote will have any effect should make him think twice about committing a federal offense.
However, on the same note, however, while I would find the practice despicable and would certainly let him know it, the harm done is so negligible it would not be worth turning him in for the potential heartache it might cause within the family.
Look this is one of those offenses that offends our sensibilities far in excess of the actual harm it does.
cowgirl, it’s similar here. In Ohio, at least, you have to show the Board of Elections something with your current address on it in order to register. That might be a U.S. passport, driver’s license, state ID, utility bill, etc. Despite some anecdotes to the contrary and despite occasional partisan bickering on the subject, election fraud still seems to be pretty rare in the U.S.
I recently moved from a Brooklyn district to a Manhattan district. Should I not vote as I am registered to vote in a district in which I no longer reside?
Pft. I would have cut him off at “I’m voting Republican”. If he has so little regard for the political health of this country as to vote for the Republican party in any capacity at the moment, then he’s getting the “crazy relative that I avoid talking to or being involved with in any form” treatment.
In Ohio there isn’t a good mechanism to drop non-residents from the voting lists. When I checked on line to confirm my polling place, I put my address into the voter identification field and found out that two people, one woman and one man neither of whom were living with me were registered to vote from my address.
I don’t know if they had been voting absentee or not, because if you just stop voting it takes five years for the board of electors to purge you from the voter list, and they refused to tell me if either person had cast a vote in the four years since I bought the house, but I did report that they were no longer residents, if indeed they ever were, because only the woman was living in the house when I bought it.
If she was voting I don’t know who she would have been voting for, but since the only cable in the house was from the satellite dish connected to Bob Jones University for home schooling her children I can make a pretty good guess.
I talked to him about it recently. He said that when he went to Ohio to renew his driver’s license (he still keeps one here, along with a registered vehicle in Cleveland), he accidentally gave the wrong address, so he’s now a resident of either a neighbor’s house or a house that doesn’t exist. Ha.
This is my stepfather, BTW, who has been a father to me since I was 3 years old. If it were crazy uncle or cousin I’d have no problem turning him in, but being that it’s my dad, that makes a bit of a difference to me.
Thankfully, he’s not involving me, and I have no idea if his voter scheme is going to work now, since I’m pretty sure his ID address and voter registration do not match.
See, and now it seems a whole lot more sensible since you injected some reality into it. It’s no longer a hypothetical bastard that can be written off because no one cares about the hypothetical bastard relative.