Voting in several States

Hello there,
I am from Europe and kind of curious on the American way of elections.
Suppose Joe Average is a resident in Georgia. He’s voting there in anticipated vote for candidate K in September .What prevent him of moving officially to Virginia, register there and then vote a second time for candidate K? And even more moving and voting in other States?

I don’t know how all the states do it. But, in New York, the last day to register to vote is the same as the first day for early voting. And in order to register, you have to have been “a resident of this state and the county, city or village for at least 30 days before the election”.

And also to “not claim the right to vote elsewhere”.

No national voter registry exists. People move all the time and while technically they are supposed to notify the state they are leaving, practically nobody does. As a result Secretarys of State normally go through and clean out voter rolls before elections. What criteria do they use? Whatever they want. This leads to far more legitimate voters being taken off the rolls than voters given a second chance.

Anyway, Joe Average could move to another state and nothing would stop him from voting - except that almost every state requires registration at some point before the election. A well-thought-out plan to do early voting in one state and then move to a second state just before the cutoff might work - assuming the second state did not have a requirement that a person must have lived in that state for a certain amount of time. It might be easier to have moved to a second state and then go back to the first state hoping that your obsolete registration had not yet been purged.

A few cases of double voting in multiple states are reported each year. Doing so is a federal crime, and may also be a separate state crime. Oddly, a 2015 case exists in which the double voting in federal elections was allowed, although Arizona changed its law the next year to make that explicitly illegal.

Nobody except for CTs (Conspiracy Twitbrains) worry about this practice. Enough safeguards are built into even our patchwork system to make doing so very unusual and almost always inadvertent.

Yes and no.

Here in FL a vast number of people are part-time residents here and also long-time residents of some northeastern state with physical residences in both places. In many cases they register their cars and file their taxes here because it’s cheaper despite residing there much more than 6 months per year.

Many of them are quite proud of voting in both places. They’re smart enough and perceptive enough to have found a huge loophole, and so it’s totally imcumbent upon them to (ab)use the shit out of it.

With some effort and forethought, a person could vote illegally in two or more states.

But that would be an awful lot of effort and risk for something with no payoff. The likelihood it’d make any difference in the results is a zillion to one, and you’re risking going to prison and ruining your life without a fair amount of effort in covering your tracks.

If you tried to get MANY people to do it to actually change the results, your odds of getting caught soar to one hundred percent.

Big democracies have little voter fraud at the individual level for this very reason.

I suppose the answer is “every state’s different” but an 18 yr old politically-minded freshman gal at Penn State, who grew up in (and Mom and Dad still live in) Dallas, is she going to be able to easily register and vote in PA rather than TX?

Or is “absentee mail-in voting in her home-home state of TX” her only real option? For obvious reasons, I can see Republicans doing everything they can to keep the 18 - 24 yr old gals from easily voting this year

It is like any other crime. Most perpetrators probably get away with it the first time, but, if you do it repeatedly, there’s increasing risk of getting caught.

One of many examples I can find googling:

4th resident of The Villages admits to voting twice in the 2020 election

The probability of fraud affecting results seems quite low to me. But it could happen.

Punishment varies.

I mostly agree with your post, but it is not smart for the individual.

The probability your second vote, for the a federal office, deciding a contest is tiny compared to the chances of being caught.

If Trump wins Florida or Arizona, by, say, fifty votes, I will suspect snow bird double voting. But an outcome this close is highly unlikely.

I agree it’s not objectively smart for the individual.

To clarify … I was trying to outline what their thought processes are as explained to me. They are evidently happy about the idea of putting one over on the system.

That’s not a POV I personally share, but it does seem to be the one they hold.

My choice of rhetoric did not make that as clear as it should have. Sorry to write confusingly.

I expect that the majority of the double-voting snowbirds are Trumpists. Contrary to what the Pubs claim.

That is about 95% my experience.

She will be able to vote in PA if she meets the other requirements such as living there for at least 30 days before the election. I’m pretty sure most states allow college students to choose if they still maintain a residence with mom and dad. ( if she has an apartment in PA and doesn’t go back to Dallas for school breaks, she may not be permitted to vote in Dallas)

Certain college students and snowbirds have some choice - but they will always be able to vote in the place they physically live as long as the meet the length of residency requirement. Which is usually about 30 days - and you will typically keep your residency even during temporary absences. But states don’t have to use the same definition of “resident” for every situation. You can be a resident who is required to change your driver’s license at the same time as you are required to pay non-resident rates at the public college.

My college student child changed her registration to vote in PA in 2020 because she could, and wanted to vote where her vote would matter more. She did not UNregister here at home in NJ so she could have voted twice if she’d wanted to break the law. But she, being law-abiding, chose not to. :slight_smile:

Florida officials may agree, explaining why they are throwing away what sounds like their best enforcement tool:

Florida Withdraws From Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) Amid Concerns About Data Privacy and Blatant Partisanship

I just did some googling to see if news stories documenting double-voting convictions really allow one to draw partisan conclusions. Problem is, most of the stories do not mention the party. Do I think the majority of the double-voters are Trump supporters? Yes. Do I think I just engaged in motivated reasoning backed by an inadequate sample size of evidence? Yes again.

There’s a law in Montana that anyone who counts as a resident of Montana for any purpose counts as a resident of Montana for every purpose.

And notwithstanding that law, it’s not true. Most notably from my point of view, it’s impossible to become a resident of Montana for purposes of in-state tuition, while you’re a full-time student. It was customary for grad students to spend one year just under the full-time threshold, in order to officially become residents.

Hasn’t some newspaper or outside source done a study of double-voting by snowbirds that would give some magnitude to the amount?

Well thanks, that clears a little more the situation.