Thinking about Elections

VOTING AND RESIDENCY REQUIREMENTS. The 1970 amendments to the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965 prohibited states from requiring more than a 30-day residency requirement to register to vote. The effect on voter turnout was huge in a society as mobile as in the US. It’s estimated that 15 million people were kept from voting in 1964 because of lengthy residency requirements. States varied, but residency requirements of 6 months to a year or more were common. Many states also barred members of the military from establishing residency, and thus they could not vote. Students also were prevented from voting. (The 1970 amendments to the VRA also mandated that people who changed residence <30 days before an election could cast absentee ballots based on their previous residence.)

In the 19th century, when most residency rules were drafted, the most mobile Americans were semiskilled and unskilled workers. By the mid-20th century that had changed, and the middle and upper classes were the mobile ones. So, by 1970, lengthy residency requirements to vote not only excluded transients, they excluded middle- and upper-class voters that the laws originally sought to prioritize. People were disenfranchised when they simply moved across the street.

By the 1980s, courts were ruling that the homeless could establish residency wherever they usually slept, that individuals could not be denied the right to vote because they had non-traditional residences or could not afford housing.

But how exactly is “residency” defined? If you spend a year or two in Florida or Colorado or Spain, can you still a resident of South Dakota?

https://www.bhpioneer.com/local_news/sd-sec-of-state-announces-new-residency-requirements-for-voter-registration/article_8d7fdce4-4f48-4af1-aa0f-f1ebda2aaa2a.html