Are there places you can run for office if you don't live there?

[Hari_Seldon]

@Heracles

The Canadian federal election of 2011 saw several candidates from the New Democratic Party elected in Québec. This “orange wave”, mostly a consequence of the unpopularity of the Conservatives in Ottawa and the sudden popularity of NDP leader Jack Layton, was a surprise to many, including some of the electees. A few rural districts had never even been visited by their new MPs.

To add to this, one of them was on vacation somewhere on election day. She didn’t campaign and certainly never expected to win. It was a district that was essentially 100% French speaking and she really didn’t speak it. But once elected she took it seriously, took intensive French lessons, started visiting her constituents, got known in the district, worked very hard for her constituency and was one of the few of those NDPers to get reelected in 2015.

[Melbourne]

@dtilque

It doesn’t look so good when running for election. One’s opponent can make it an issue.

But for our CBD elections it wouldn’t be an issue. Most of the votes cast are from business owners, not residents, and those votes tend to go to a business owner, not residents.

[Mk_VII]

Until fairly recently few British MPs would have lived in the area they represented, and few people would have expected them to (Churchill didn’t, for example). The MP might well only visit the place once a year.

[Alley_Dweller]

An interesting article in Vulture.com gets some political campaign experts to analyze Randall’s campaign and explain what he is doing wrong:
Would Randall Actually Win His Election on This Is Us?

“Under the Philadelphia Home Rule Charter, you have to have lived in the district for over a year before the November general election,” says Adam Bonin, a campaign finance and elections attorney based in the City of Brotherly Love. With the potential workaround, Aptaker says, “Randall is using the building he owns, and William’s apartment which he was paying rent on, to establish residency.”
…
Bonin says this is a problem because the law is defined “not as where you plant a flag for convenience, but the fixed point to which you always plan to return” and that “there is a statute that says if you’re married, where your spouse lives is presumptively where you live.”

By the way, Randall lives in Alpine NJ, which is 113 miles from Philadelphia. Not exactly a casual drive in east coast traffic,