[QUOTE=Draelin]
I found out yesterday that somehow my voting registration didn’t transfer to my new town. So I have to go back to the old town (half an hour or so–plus traffic) to vote after work. I might not bother if my mother hadn’t called me last night to tell me how important it was for me to vote (even though she hasn’t lived in New Jersey for several years now).
So I’ll be home late tonight. 
[/QUOTE]
Look at it this way, Drae… you will be able to vote.
I spent 2003 “living” in the States. The commas are because I actually spent more time out of the country than in, but anyway I did like my passport said to do and registered at the consulate as a resident. One cool thing about having to register at a consulate in NYC and working for a company that wants its employers to dot all the legal i’s and cross all the legal t’s is that it gives you an excuse for a day trip to Manhattan 
I went back to Spain on March 13, 2004. When the plane left it was the day before my birthday; when it landed, it was my birthday. And the next day, Sunday 14th, was election day.
I was not allowed to vote, even though my name was on the list, because it said “absent, in NYC”. In order to be able to vote in March, I would have had to de-register in NY in September… but wait a minute… in September, I still had to live in Philly for six months!
There were local elections in June and I wasn’t able to vote in those, either
Being old enough to remember the excitement over the 1976 Constitutional vote, this is a right that it royally pisses me not being able to use.
I wrote to the national ombudsman about it and he said “oh, this was according to regs”. Yeah I know - my complaint is not with what the bureaucrats did, it’s with having regs that were written as if documents still traveled on lines of donkeys :rolleyes:
And the detail that colors me purple?
When I was there '94-'98 I was also registered… but, being a student, it was as a “transient” even though I spent more actual time there… so, as a transient - I could vote either in my consulate or at home just fine, and did! :smack:
You may report me for overuse of smileys now if you want. But if it’s election day where you live, you can’t do this until you’ve voted, mmmmkay?