Imagine going into a meeting of a homeowner’s association and saying: I don’t own any of these units, but I stay here sometimes with a friend who owns one, so I should get a vote.
Imagine going into a meeting of the shareholders of a corporation saying: I don’t own any shares of this company, but I use your products sometimes, so I should get a vote.
Imagine going to a polling place in Canada on election day and saying: I’m not a citizen of Canada, but I go to school here, so I should get a vote.
These are all absurd, right?
The 14th Amendment says that citizens of the US are citizens of the state (singular) where they reside.
It’s true that this doesn’t include any mention of time, i.e., that you have to live in a state for any specific period to be considered a resident.
But it’s also true that for a state to know whether to treat you as a citizen or a guest (i.e., a citizen of some other state or country), it would need
- some formal declaration on your part (‘I choose to be a citizen of this state, and not any other’); and
- some way of reliably verifying this declaration.
Verification would naturally take the form of a driver’s license, or some other state-issued document. (Using a lease, or a utility bill, or anything that just lists an address shouldn’t count. Nor should a student ID. A simple test would be: If you could get a document in another country without being a citizen there, then getting one here doesn’t prove anything.)
Viewed this way, it’s very straightforward: Citizens vote where they are citizens. So straightforward, in fact, that it baffles me that this is even an issue.
No one expects a citizen of the US to be able to vote in Canada. Why would anyone expect a citizen of Massachusetts to be able to vote in New Hampshire?
If I had to guess, I think it might have something to do with a couple of basic misconceptions that many people have about our federal system of government.
The first misconception — promoted by endless discussions about the irrelevant ‘popular vote’ — is that the citizens of the US elect a president directly, when in fact it’s the states — the entities that created the federal government — that elect the person who will serve as the federal executive for the next four years.
The second misconception — promoted by political fundraising activities that increasingly reach across state lines — is that each member of Congress represents the entire country, rather than the state that elects him.
We can characterize these as two branches of a single misconception: that we have a national government, rather than a federal government.
Now, if you think we have a national government, then it makes perfect sense to think that you should be able to vote (at least, for president and for members of Congress) wherever you happen to be on election day. But we have a federal government. Elections are state affairs. And citizens of states vote in their states.
Having said all that, in discussing this with people, I’ve found that there is always one wrinkle that comes up, which is: What if I own property in a state? Shouldn’t I be able to vote there?
It creates a potential inconsistency, because clearly it’s possible to own property in more than one state. And we all know stories about people who own summer homes, for example, but who don’t get a say in how those properties are taxed. That’s taxation without representation, isn’t it?
But as Ayn Rand said: Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. One of them will be wrong.
In this case, the faulty premise is that anyone actually owns property in a state. You may have a deed to a property, but it’s basically a lease. The state owns the property, and is letting you use it. If you disagree, try not paying your property taxes for a while, and see what happens.
So property ‘owners’ are really all just property renters. And as we’ve seen, a lease doesn’t make you a citizen. It’s irrelevant to the discussion.
So to sum up: Choosing makes you a citizen. Documentation verifies that choice. And you vote where you’re a citizen. Trying to make it more complicated than that (by trying to nail down precise definitions of ‘residence’ or ‘domicile’, and especially by getting judges involved) is just an invitation to continued electoral chaos.
