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Resident and registered voter, non-college student, of state A moves to state B. At what point, if any, is the voter legally required to change their registration from A to B.
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The same resident above does not register in state B and remains registered at his/her parents’ address in state A. Voter also changes registration in state A along with parents when the parents move to a new address in state A despite voter never having lived at that address. Is this voter fraud?
There are as many answers as there are states. Ballparking …
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To a first approximation you can’t vote in state A once you don’t live there (with a few special purpose exceptions). Your registration becomes dormant but you’re not obligated to explicitly cancel it. Typically this dormancy transition happens within a couple months of being physically in your new state with intent to remain UFN. You’re also welcome to never register in state B. Though if you don’t, you won’t be voting there either.
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Definitely intent to fraud. Probably illegal everywhere.
You can probably get away with both #1 & #2 for a bunch of years if you’re careful & lucky. I’m just talking about how it’s supposed to work, not what you might practically get away with.
The Constitution’s 14th Amendment specifies that a citizens of the United States is a “citizens of the state in which they reside”. If by “move” you mean change legal residence, then I’d assume it’s illegal to continue to vote in the first state. I’m pretty sure you don’t need to actually de-register in the first state. However, I’d think registering at the new address is fraudulent.
Case 1: Nobody has to register to vote, or unregister.
Case 2: Probably illegal in all states but wouldn’t ever come up unless he tries to actually vote in state A.
To clarify, this voter never registered to vote in state B but continues to vote regularly in state A by absentee ballot.
Regarding case 1, of course no one is legally obligated to register to vote, I’m just asking at what point the voter would become ineligible to vote in state A, regardless of registration status in B.
In Florida, you may register to vote as long as you meet the general eligibility criteria. It doesn’t matter if you are registered in another state as the state assumes you are abandoning your former registration.
You become ineligible to vote as soon as you intend to make some other state your primary residence.
Is this voter an active member of the armed forces, or the spouse of one?
Then they’re allowed to, because their residency and registration (for taxation and voting purposes) are protected by law. They are resident and registered in the state they selected as their state of residence, in which they lived at one point during the course of the military career (and resulting sequence of duty station changes). Even if they’re physically resident in another state at the moment.
But that’s a very specific exception, and the existence of the exception proves the rule: you vote where you live, not where you used to live.
There are instances where you could legally continue to vote in state A after moving to state B. Members of the armed services always have that right under federal law. College students may, depending on the state.
There’s another exception: if you are a full-time college student living in the residence halls, using your parents’ address as your address, and your parents move to another state mid-year, you can change your “home” address to your parents’ new state, and register to vote there, even if you have never lived there.
There may be a few other narrow exceptions. Some people who live abroad may maintain a state of residence for purposes of voting, and there are probably legal ways of changing their state of residence. These would be people who live abroad but are diplomats, correspondents, or other people who are not considered for some reason ex-pats, but maintain a state of residence for purposes of taxation. People who simply decide to live abroad, and manage to do so either legally or illegally (for example, American Jews who move to Israel) may not have a state of residence and may let voter registration lapse, and may have trouble re-registering if they cannot demonstrate US residence.
No parties in this scenario are military members. The voter did originally leave state A for state B due to college but that was a long time ago. The parents’ move to a new address within state A was recent.
As stated by the others above…
Assuming you’re not military or a college student temporarily living in state B, or a couple of other vanishingly rare exceptions, you become ineligible to vote in state A within a month or so of starting to sleep in state B. Voting in state A after that time is voter fraud. Period. Even if you never register in B you still can’t vote in A.
Unless you are in a covered category of people who can retain state residency while away (typically college students or military), there is no blanket rule. Remember, each state is fully responsible for all rules and laws concerning all elections, including “federal” elections. So the state in which you intend to vote (whether it’s your old state or your new one) will have that spelled out, and it will differ from state to state.
Also, each state has its own rules about how soon you have to get a DL and car plates when you move into the state. For most things, except for driving and voting, you actually never need to tell anyone that you’ve moved. However, a state ID from another state will often not be accepted if you use it to identity yourself for a bank account, library card, etc., so it is practical (but not legally mandatory) to get a new ID in your new state.
As long as you don’t register to vote in your new state, there is no reason you cannot continue to vote in your old state. If you move out of the US permanently, you can still vote absentee in any state that will mail you a ballot based on prior voter registration in that state. If you’ve never voted in the US, you can still get an overseas absentee ballot from a state that you declare to have been your last state of residence.
But could you actually change your address in the old state to an address you’ve never lived at as in the example?
My belief is that jtur88 is flat wrong. If you’re seriously considering doing something like this, or know someone who is, you need to know the specifics of the laws in State A. As well, since voter registration is performed at the county level in most of the US, you also need to know the county-level laws and regulations.
In my opinion they might, just might, permit your scenario #1. But probably not. No way in heck will they permit your scenario #2.
If you want to tell us the locations of interest we can look it up. If you don’t, then you have to look it up yourself. Anything else you’ll see here is semi-informed guesswork. For various posters’ wildly differing values of semi-informed.
You are required to vote at the polling place that covers your legal residence. The definition of “legal residence” is open to plenty of interpretation, and can vary in ways having nothing to do with voting residence (e.g., are you a resident who has to pay income taxes?)
So the answer to #1 is that the voter is not required to change their registration. They can vote absentee from their original home, or return to vote in person. As long as they are not voting in both locations it’s fine. In most states, your registration expires if you fail to vote in a certain number of elections, so if you start voting in a different state, the registration in your first state will eventually lapse.
As for #2, the answer isn’t simple. There’s nothing stopping the voter from using his parent’s new address as his voting address. However, he can’t vote there unless he’s registered there. Once registered at the new address, it’s the same as it ever was – he has a registration at this parent’s address unless it lapses for nonuse.
He also can keep his parent’s old address as his voting address. There’s nothing fraudulent about being registered there. People often move, and their registration remains in effect at the old address. Someone can challenge, but the usual response to a successful challenge is to remove the voter from the voting rolls, not go after him for fraud.
If he votes in two locations, then there’s cause for legal action. If he votes in just one of the two, and is registered both jurisdictions, the Board of Elections isn’t going to worry about it.
In my state, it is a felony to vote (or attempt to vote) if you are not a resident of Kansas, with residence defined as “the place adopted by a person as such person’s place of habitation, and to which, whenever such person is absent, such person has the intention of returning.” The law does provide exceptions for federal services voters (military, diplomats, overseas citizens) and a few other select categories, but for somebody who is a legal resident of some other state (domiciled there, pays resident taxes there, etc.), there is a very good reason not to continue to vote in Kansas: jail.
Cites: rule for determining residence, election crimes
Now, somebody doing that would probably get away with it, possibly for many years, but if the voter’s registration and participation ever came to official notice, it could get quite unpleasant.
The question can’t be answered without knowing the states involved, although my guess is that no state would actually allow either ( getting away with it is another story)
This is perhaps a bit of a hijack- but why would you want to vote in a place you *don’t *live rather than a place you do live? I can understand students away at school wanting to vote at home if they plan to return there when their education is complete. Military members presumably plan to return to their state of legal residence. But I don’t understand why someone who has lived in State B for years would prefer to vote using a residence in State A where they have never lived and don’t intend to live rather than voting in State B. Is there an actual reason, or is it some sort of scenario where something like car insurance is cheaper in State A so the person wants everything official to have the State A address rather than the accurate State B address?
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Choosing to support a candidate in a swing state instead of a landslide state might be a good reason. If you could vote for a presidential elector from Oklahoma or one from Florida, which would you choose?
It is suspected that a large number of Alabama residents who worked in Pensacola in 2000 registered and voted in Florida – enough of them to elect Bush.
I am not sure this is pertinent, but IIRC, a year or perhaps two after Katrina hit New Orleans, there was a local election for mayor (and perhaps, governor). Special legislation was passed in Louisiana to allow prior residents or New Orleans to be able to vote in this election even though they were legal residents of another state. Perhaps some posters from Louisiana can either confirm or deny my recollections.
My point is that I doubt they would have had to enact special legislation if it was legally OK to vote in a New Orleans election even though you lived somewhere else.