I seem to be registered to vote in two states. What should I do?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I used to live in California. I was registered to vote there. Then I moved to Illinois, and registered to vote there. I have voted successfully in Illinois several times. I never gave any thought to it, but I guess I assumed that there’s some kind of process by which Illinois would tell California that I don’t live there anymore. I have not tried to vote in California since I left.

I recently received a letter through the Peace Corps Bulgaria office from…Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), telling me what a great humanitarian I am, blah blah blah. I was pretty startled (and disappointed, when I saw the US Senate stationary, I thought it might be from Barack Obama), because of the whole not living in California thing.

And so, I have come to the conclusion that I am registered to vote in both states. What should I do? Should I email the Sonoma County elections people and tell them I don’t live there and haven’t lived there for years? Should I ignore it and continue to collect junk mail from elected officials in states where I do not live? Or, the sneakiest and illegalest option, should I vote twice in 2008? (I kid. I will not vote twice. Insert joke about Chicago voter fraud here.)

2

So Boxer sent mail to your Illinois address? Not sure why that would be, but I wouldn’t worry about it.

3

At the November election, we had a voter who was registered in three precincts. She could have voted in all three, and I don’t think anyone would have caught it. Is there a national voter database? There should be.

In Iowa, it’s a big deal to get someone off the voter lists. The officials want to see you in person to report an address change or name change, and if a voter has died, they want to see the death certificate.

4

In my state, the basic rule is “you cannot vote is both simultaneously”

5

If you want to tell Sonoma County that you’re no longer there, go ahead. Otherwise, just keep on voting in Illinois.

They’ve probably dropped you already - being registered to vote is not necessarily what drives Barbara’s mailing lists.

6

Just ignore it. There must be many many thousands of people who move every year and do not supply forwarding addresses. You are not the first.

Just don’t try to vote twice, because if you do and you ever run for congress, your opponent will be able to find out and use that against you.

7

What if you maintain a residence and voter reg in CA and IL… could you run for and be elected governor of both states simultaneously?

8

No, there isn’t. And there should NOT be. Voting is controlled by the various States under the Constitution, and we’ve already had too much taken over by the Federal Government.

Here in Minnesota (like many states), there is a state-wide voter database, cross-checked with Drivers Licenses & SSN files, and they do watch for people who are registered on the database in more than one precinct. Once in a great while, they even catch someone voting twice, which can leave them open to legal penalties.

9

You’re in Illinois. You know the Illinois state motto–“Vote early and vote often.”

10

No, she sent it to the Peace Corps Office in Sofia. The envelope said, in its entirety:

KYLA LAST-NAME
BULGARIA

I’d heard she was sending letters to all the PCVs from California, but didn’t expect one myself.

11

Vote Democrats.

12

If your find a solition to this issue, please post. We have been living abroad for over 27 years and settled in Virginia since 1990. New York State still has my wife registered to vote and jury duty, although we have been voting and serving as jurors in Virginia Beach since.:smack:

13

Being registered in two states isn’t a problem. Voting in two state is, I believe, a federal felony.

14

Each state has their own process to remove obsolete people from their list, based on how long since they last voted and the time varies by state). As far as I know, there is no communication process between states to update registrations. (How would this work? How would California verify that the Kyla that Illinois has as a new registered voter is the same Kyla from Sonoma County?)

You could try emailing the info to Sonoma County, but they might not be able to act on that – some states have laws that prevent them from acting on such info. (Because otherwise, it could be easily used for vote fraud: get a list of known Democratic voters, send each county an email saying they have moved out of state, and get them removed from the registered voter list. They probably won’t discover that until Election Day, when they try to vote. And fixing it won’t be easy – many states have advance deadlines for registering.

15

Yeah, my vote is for you to keep voting in IL, and simply ignore the CA thing, and definitely don’t vote twice.

When I lived in San Francisco years ago, my dead grandmother remained on the voting list for years after she died. I kept telling the poll workers, but it was never corrected. Oh well.

16

Kyla hasn’t posted here in two months, which is lucky considering the age of this thread. Maybe a different clueless noob can revive the thread after she posts again?