-
If I maintain residences in two states and I am registered to vote in each state, can I be governor of both states if elected? Senator?
-
I know I cannot vote twice in the same election based upon dual voter registration. However, what if I only vote once for President on my ballot in State A, then vote for all the down-ticket items on the ballots in both State A and State B?
In general, and in most jurisdictions exclusively, you may only vote in one place. Period. You may have multiple residences, but you may have only one domicile. A legal residence is a place in which you live long enough to gain resident status (often 30 days); a domicile is your permanent primary residence, selected by you from among your legal residences so long as it meets the local criteria for being a domicile. While there are exceptions, your domicile, your official legal residence of record, and the place you identify to the voting board are synonymous, and choosing one generally legally chooses the other two.
Now, the exception: A bonding resolution (authorization from the voters to a municipality to contract indebtedness as a municipality, with the taxpayers ultimately footing the bill) may be submitted for vote at a special election (or, sometimes, in the general election), depending on the provisions of state law. In some areas, voting on such a resolution – as opposed to voting for candidates for election – is open to all taxpayers of the relevant municipality. (“Municipality” here includes special-function governmental bodies like school districts, fire districts, sewer/water districts, etc.) For example, the town council of a summer resort, legal year-round population 40, summer population 950, may find it necessary to put in a sewerage system replacing the individual septic tanks, as the community gets more crowded and the ability of the local soil to deal with waste sanitarily is pushed to the limit. If they do so in some states, the property owners among the summer residents, who may live 300 miles away or in Florida most of the year, have the right to vote on whether their taxes will be increased to underwrite the bonds paying for the sewerage system. This does not mean they have the right to vote for county sheriff or state representative there, and it does not affect their right to vote in their home town; it’s a privilege extended them to have a legal say in what their taxes will be paying for.
But barring that unusual exception, state laws provide that you are entitled to vote only once, at your “domicile” or “primary legal residence.” (Note that going away to college, serving in the military, etc., do not automatically work a change of domicile – it remains in your permanent home, wherever you may be spending most of the year while in college, service, etc. But you have the option to voluntarily move your legal residence to the place you reside while in college/service if you so choose.)
Oops – missed some stuff. You may only be elected to office where your primary legal residence is located (see the Constitution for relevant provisions regarding Congress, and state laws on public officers for the relevant state statutes). It is possible to have your legal residence be somewhere other than where you spend most of the year, for this purpose, at least in some states. Examples: The Supervisor (CEO) of a rural town[ship] in the Tug Hill area of upstate New York was born and raised in that small town, went away to college, parlayed his work experience into a job with a rent-a-truck firm, rose to become VP and General Manager of that company, and lives, with his family, in a suburb near where his firm is headquartered. But he never moved his legal residence, still owns the family land he inherited in that town, and is willing to spend the time and effort to do the business of the town as a corporate entity, drive up for meetings, etc. That town lies in an Assembly district whose legislator lived in the county seat of that county. When the opposing party got a majority in the Assembly, they gerrymandered his home town out of his district into an adjacent district. He was very well liked – in fact, I helped campaign for him a few times while living in the area – and what he did was to swap his legal residence to his summer cottage, which remained within the district. While everyone knew this was subterfuge, they also knew he’d done a good job as Assemblyman and that he was the victim of a gerrymandering trick – and re-elected him in a landslide.
And, the obvious point: There are only 538 people in this country who voted for President in 2004. The rest of us may have thought we were voting for Bush, Kerry, or whoever, but we actually voted for a slate of electors pledged to them. Those slates vary by state, and you cannot “vote for President” in, say, Florida, and for local officials in your home town in Colorado. When you vote, you’re helping choose whom Colorado will select as Presidential Electors. The fact that Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry’s name appeared on both ballots is immaterial – you’re actually voting for a state-specific slate of men and women pledged to vote for one of them.