Liveaboard voting rights threatened in Clay County FL

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by hpeer

I am impacted if SBI goes out of business, which was the point of the origional article.

Having looked into it in the past, SBI is primarily a mail forwarding service and secondarily allows you get a drivers license when you don't have an address. Voter registration is tertiary to their business.

If their core business model is primarily based on getting non-residents registered to vote in local elections...I'm OK if they go out of business.

[john61ct]

That legal domicile address side of the business will go away anyway over time.

In the meantime using a true residential S&B address of a trusted friend or relative, is something all of us should be moving toward anyway.

At some point hopefully the gummint will have an official mechanism to allow for domestic nomads without any ties to a fixed location, as they do for expats.

[Argyle38]

Originally Posted by valhalla360

While I understand the concern, really should they be voting in local elections if they don't live there...never have lived there and have no intention of ever living there? If I was a "real" resident of the area, I'd be annoyed that people with no attachment to my community was voting on community candidates and issues.

Check out below for a possible solution that allows you to participate in federal elections:

https://travel.state.gov/content/tra...ad/voting.html

This isn't necessarily a solution to national voting for SBI customers. On the second tab labeled 'Absentee voting basics' it says:

Each year, submit a completed Federal Post Card Application (FPCA) to your local election officials. They will:

1. Confirm your eligibility to vote and put your name on a list to receive absentee ballots for any elections held that calendar year.
2. Send you a blank absentee ballot electronically or by mail.

The statement from the Clay county election official said they would purge anyone from the election rolls that didn't fulfill their residency requirements (IIRC). They didn't say anything about keeping them on just for national elections. So if you are not on their election rolls, you have nowhere to send your FPCA to, therefore you can't vote an any election.


SBI has sent a letter to the Clay county election board asking what mechanism they have for maintaining voting rights for their customers. Don't know if there has been a response.


FWIW, I agree with the sentiment that local elections should be voted on only by actual residents. If Clay county has that mechanism and is only concerned with local voting, then they should be clear about that. As it stands now, they may be threatening the ability to people to vote in national elections.

[a64pilot]

I was physically at SBI yesterday and they are still doing a booming business and still registering people for mail, they are not as of this time assisting in voting registration as of yesterday.
Realize they never, ever registered anyone, they simply told you how, the Clay County voters registration dept registered you, not SBI, and I think it’s important to understand that, it’s significant.

[a64pilot]

Originally Posted by john61ct

That legal domicile address side of the business will go away anyway over time.

In the meantime using a true residential S&B address of a trusted friend or relative, is something all of us should be moving toward anyway.

At some point hopefully the gummint will have an official mechanism to allow for domestic nomads without any ties to a fixed location, as they do for expats.

Why do you say we should be using a relative or friends address?
You don’t live their either, what is the difference?

[sailpower]

For those stating that national elections are not local consider that your ability to choose who to vote for House and Senate seats is dependent on where you are registered to vote.

POTUS/VPOTUS are elected by electoral votes which are determined by state tally's. So what state one votes in can make a difference in the outcome. FL being an excellent example of a swing state.

I don't see the distinction between voting for candidates to represent a state and/or congressional district in a state where one never lives as being much different from voting for local candidates?

If all one has to do is open a mailbox to vote for so called national offices, what would prevent people from say, CA, from opening SBI accounts in FL in order to swing that state?

[hpeer]

Correct, as I understand the issue managing citizenship is a Federal responsibility, the mechanics of registering folks to vote is a state responsibility.

I suspect that, however sensical it sounds, Clay Counties interpretation may well be unconstitutional. I’m not entirely sure how it is all intertwined but new federal drivers license standards require states to adhere, and due to federal motor voter laws the states have the responsibility to clarify voting elegibility. None of that falls in the County jurisdiction.

Getting to the essence it is akin to requiring someone to own land to vote. Unconstitutional. Now it’s requiring someone not to own land but to show some poorly defined interest. It all gets murkey pretty quick.

[sailpower]

Originally Posted by hpeer

Correct, as I understand the issue managing citizenship is a Federal responsibility, the mechanics of registering folks to vote is a state responsibility.

I suspect that, however sensical it sounds, Clay Counties interpretation may well be unconstitutional. I’m not entirely sure how it is all intertwined but new federal drivers license standards require states to adhere, and due to federal motor voter laws the states have the responsibility to clarify voting elegibility. None of that falls in the County jurisdiction.

Getting to the essence it is akin to requiring someone to own land to vote. Unconstitutional. Now it’s requiring someone not to own land but to show some poorly defined interest. It all gets murkey pretty quick.

Murky? Poorly defined interest?

It seems that no one is required to own land or real property in order to vote in Clay county. One does have to have an intent to actually live there. Seems pretty straightforward.

When applying the law they seem to be stating that not actually living there or even intending to live there is in fact not a good faith intention to live there. Hard to argue with that?

“To establish legal residence, a person must have a ‘good faith intention’ to reside in a particular place, coupled with ‘positive overt acts’ that demonstrate that intention…. Such ‘overt acts’ could include the person buying a home in the county, applying for homestead in the county, registering his or her vehicle in the county, receiving mail at an address in the county, or undertaking any other activity normally associated with home life."

[john61ct]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

Why do you say we should be using a relative or friends address?
You don’t live their either, what is the difference?

The use of commercial letterbox services is fine as a mailing address.

More and more organizations subscribe to database blacklisting services that don't allow you to claim that type of address as your legal residence.

Especially true for banks, brokerages, credit cards, insurance and other financial services.

Increasingly gummint orgs will do the same.

A few extra people claiming to live at Aunt Sally's house won't raise any red flags.

[dwedeking2]

Actually my experience, over the last 8 or 9 years, is that people are not as strict as they were right after 9/11 with using a mailing service for things like banks, credit cards, investment accounts. Wasn't even an issue with getting State ID recently.



I don't like using family as they don't have the experience with shipping practices (cost me $300 shipping for a scuba tank as my brother didn't understand what "ground" shipping to Hawai'i entailed, don't even want to try it with international shipments) and it can become a burden. With my shipping service I just go online and say "ship it to me" and it's shipped within an hour.

[Woodland Hills]

Originally Posted by sailpower

Murky? Poorly defined interest?

It seems that no one is required to own land or real property in order to vote in Clay county. One does have to have an intent to actually live there. Seems pretty straightforward.

When applying the law they seem to be stating that not actually living there or even intending to live there is in fact not a good faith intention to live there. Hard to argue with that?

“To establish legal residence, a person must have a ‘good faith intention’ to reside in a particular place, coupled with ‘positive overt acts’ that demonstrate that intention…. Such ‘overt acts’ could include the person buying a home in the county, applying for homestead in the county, registering his or her vehicle in the county, receiving mail at an address in the county, or undertaking any other activity normally associated with home life."

It seems pretty clear: we receive mail there, register our cars there and someday in the future we intend to reside there. So why can’t we vote there? I am 65 and at this point in my life I fully expect to move to Clay County in 25 or 30 years...... When we get old and move ashore.

[john61ct]

Originally Posted by dwedeking2

Actually my experience, over the last 8 or 9 years, is that people are not as strict as they were
…
I don't like using family as they don't have the experience with shipping practices

The only time people at my legal domicile address ever even receive a piece of mail addressed to me is when someone has made an error.

I would never inconvenience them asking any favors dealing with physical shipping stuff.

That's what the mailing address / letterbox / forwarding services are for.

Many financial services have been getting stricter in recent years, these blacklisting services did not exist in the private sector 9/11.

Different states are dragging their feet on Real ID requirements for DLs, maybe some will continue to try to allow commercial services to offer domiciles, but IMO the feds will continue to tighten up.

Some RVers use campgrounds, marinas where you pay for liveaboard may work, and of course there will always be solutions for the homeless, but that may not be acceptable for many.

Personally trusted friend/family is by far the easiest and least likely to cause problems at an inconvenient time.

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by john61ct

The use of commercial letterbox services is fine as a mailing address.

More and more organizations subscribe to database blacklisting services that don't allow you to claim that type of address as your legal residence.

Especially true for banks, brokerages, credit cards, insurance and other financial services.

Increasingly gummint orgs will do the same.

A few extra people claiming to live at Aunt Sally's house won't raise any red flags.

Using friend or family is more convenient (Assuming you have someone reliable) but pretty hard to make a case that it should be a requirement.

As far as voting rights, it falls under the same problems...if you aren't living there, you shouldn't be allowed to impact the local elections...the only real difference is, it's much harder to track down stray 1 or 2 people putting down relatives addresses as opposed to a concentration of a few thousand unrelated people at one address.

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by sailpower

For those stating that national elections are not local consider that your ability to choose who to vote for House and Senate seats is dependent on where you are registered to vote.

POTUS/VPOTUS are elected by electoral votes which are determined by state tally's. So what state one votes in can make a difference in the outcome. FL being an excellent example of a swing state.

I don't see the distinction between voting for candidates to represent a state and/or congressional district in a state where one never lives as being much different from voting for local candidates?

If all one has to do is open a mailbox to vote for so called national offices, what would prevent people from say, CA, from opening SBI accounts in FL in order to swing that state?

Local candidates and issues, are clear cut. If you aren't a resident, you shouldn't be voting on them.

Federal does have a state tie but it gets more murky. You can't take away their right to vote...but it's also less of an issue statistically.
- 3,000 non-resident voters in a city of 10,000 is very likely to impact the results.
- 3,000 non-resident voters in a district with 711,000 voters (roughly the size)...are unlikely to impact the results.

[zboss]

Originally Posted by Larry Florida

Can't see cruisers caring much about voting in a community they are only connected to a mailbox.

This attempt at removing voting rights is exactly why we want to be able to vote! The state and presidential voting stations are run by the city/county... if we are struck from the voting roles at that level we can't vote in those elections either!

I hate to get political here but this IS a political thread - This is all about the new Republicans trying to strike democratic voters from the voter registration rolls. We pay taxes to the county even though we do not live there, no voting rights or no taxes.