I lived for a long time in Texas, and my driver’s license will not expire until 2017. However, I’ve spent most of each year in DC since 2009, and have filed taxes there. I have not been purged from the voter rolls, and am still legally registered, though with the status of “suspense.” I did a little checking, and there seem to be a lot of gray areas on what constitutes residence. Given these somewhat contradictory credentials, would I be doing anything wrong by promptly requesting an absentee ballot, as long as I’m still on the rolls and have a TX DL?
Not a legal opinion, but if Congressmen can live in DC and still be allowed to vote where they used to live, you should be able to as well. Laws should apply to everyone the same.
I grew up in Texas, but the last two states I lived in were New Mexico and Hawaii. But when my father fell sick in Texas 16 years ago and I had to make a trip to the old family home, my Hawaiian driver’s license had expired, and I picked up a Texas license based on the family address. That registered me again to vote in Texas.
That Texas license is also expired now, my father is long dead and the family manse has passed into other people’s hands, but I still use that address as my voter address. The county voter registrar seems to have no problem with that. In fact, we’ve built up quite a pleasant correspondence over the years. I think she thinks I’m “exotic,” and I can imagine the office fighting over the Thai stamps on the envelope when my ballot arrives.
I think – not a legal opinion, as IANAL – that as long as you can claim any sort of residency somewhere (provide an address) and don’t try to vote in two different places, you should be good.
Yeah, the big point is that you can’t vote twice. There are many people who are in a position to claim residency in multiple states, and they just choose which one to count as. Note that every state has different requirements for what counts as residency, and some of them aren’t even self-consistent.
As a point of reference, the standard in federal civil procedure is the last place that you lived with the intention of remaining.
Funny, I’ve been wondering the same thing. I live near Boston, but own no property in the state (I do pay taxes here, though).
However, I do have property in Florida.
Because I’m also lazy, I haven’t gotten an MA drivers license. Besides, what if I want to buy a gun one day? Way easier with a Florida license! (I kid, I kid. Mostly.)
Anyway, I guess if you only vote in one place, you’re ok. And I am pleased this year to help try to oust Rick Scott.
There are often well-defined residency requirements, but sometimes there aren’t.
I can’t find anything on Texas’s Sec’y of State website that explicitly lists what it means to be a resident for the purposes of voting.
There are detailed requirements for being a resident student (because, of course, something important is at stake: tuition money) here (warning: pdf), and somewhat more lax ones for a drivers license here.
I would say if you claim that your primary residence is in Texas, then it is, for the purposes of voting.
That gets at what I was saying about some of the requirements not being consistent. In Montana, for instance, there’s a law that if you count as a resident for any purposes, you count as a resident for all purposes. I think the intention behind that was that you can’t get a hunting permit without paying in-state taxes. But the state university system also had a set of residency rules which made it clear that it was not sufficient to be paying state taxes.
Did you post this in the wrong thread??