Right to vote in the military

[Spekkio]

You'd need a state with sufficient funding to develop and implement it. I don't know if anyone would really trust any privatization or contract company to make it happen. Money is already way too deep in politics, there is no way we will trust google or bezos or elon or gates or... to keep our votes safe and authentic.

And then there would be Mississippi, Arkansas, and West Virginia.

That was the point of my tongue-in-cheek comment about grandma counting ballots by hand - the entire system is based on people's feelings, and not actual accuracy.

No one cares who actually wins the election, only that the general public feels like the election was legitimate. And for many people, they only feel like an election is secure if they have to show up in-person to vote. But even if we were to stick to in-person voting, the fact that we're still filling out paper ballots or manually punching holes in things instead of operating a touch-screen kiosk separated from the interwebs that will in-situ auto count votes is absurd.

As for the funding issue - a federal bill can give states additional funding to execute online voting reform, there's just no demand for it. Maybe when millenials are geriatrics that will change.

 

[wink]

Yes… It was a rhetorical question.

Yes… It was a rhetorical question.

Indeed. My answer was for those who did not recognize it as such and would be left hanging. Just doing a service to elevate the state of civics 🙂

 

[sevenhelmet]

The issue I've seen with CA is actually people who buy property occasionally get a 'hey, you owe a CA state income tax return' notice, and have to spend the time to write a "per the SCRA, get fucked" letter.

I never bought a house or got a driver’s license in CA, but they came after me about a year after I left the state with a nastygram that threatened penalties, etc. sent directly to my MD address, which they somehow got. I sent an SCRA rebuttal, complete with my contact information, and never heard from them again.

I got the distinct impression that they were hoping to scare me into paying.

 

[wink]

I never bought a house or got a driver’s license in CA, but they came after me about a year after I left the state with a nastygram that threatened penalties, etc. sent directly to my MD address, which they somehow got. I sent an SCRA rebuttal, complete with my contact information, and never heard from them again.

I got the distinct impression that they were hoping to scare me into paying.

I bought a plane when in my fleet squadron at NASNI. Bought it in AZ Flew it out of Montgomery field but it spent several days a month in AZ as I flew it home almost every week. CA wanted essentially a sales tax because it was purchased out of state. Same deal, they were just trying to intimidate. Got several nasty letters while deployed. Pushed back with SCRA, proof of AZ residency and they wanted fuel receipts from AZ. Wrote I was at sea and couldn't provide. Never heard anything else. Leaches.

 

[JTS11]

I bought a plane when in my fleet squadron at NASNI. Bought it in AZ Flew it out of Montgomery field but it spent several days a month in AZ as I flew it home almost every week. CA wanted essentially a sales tax because it was purchased out of state. Same deal, they were just trying to intimidate. Got several nasty letters while deployed. Pushed back with SCRA, proof of AZ residency and they wanted fuel receipts from AZ. Wrote I was at sea and couldn't provide. Never heard anything else. Leaches.

I've heard several stories like this. If you just tell CA to pound sand (with a legit reason), they immediately back off. Same happened with me when they sent me a letter that I owed them X amount of income tax, while on active duty.

 

[Faded Float Coat]

Yeah OR and WA have been mail in since I was active duty, and even before. This isn't hard stuff. I think the kids use the term "smooth brains" now. That describes the folks who are hard up about voting in person. I did that with my grandma in the 1980's at a church. It wasn't exactly the pinnacle of real ID.

A conservative "election integrity" organization in WA, as recently as last year, was sending out VERY official and threatening letters to active duty military members who are stationed abroad but cast absentee votes in WA. This group, in their infinite wisdom, failed to consider there may be valid reasons why someone votes in WA but has a physical living address somewhere else. This came to a head when an O-6 who owns property in WA (and has voted in WA for 20+ years) but lives/works in PAX brought the letter to his congressman (and local Seattle media) attention. This helped spur legislation in Olympia that clamped down on the rules surrounding voter eligibility challenges. In this case, it was fortuitous that the individual was experienced and savy enough to read the letter with skepticism, but you could imagine younger WA voters stationed abroad reading it and fearing they were in actual trouble
#supportthetroops

 

[exNavyOffRec]

Yeah OR and WA have been mail in since I was active duty, and even before. This isn't hard stuff. I think the kids use the term "smooth brains" now. That describes the folks who are hard up about voting in person. I did that with my grandma in the 1980's at a church. It wasn't exactly the pinnacle of real ID.

I have voted by mail in WA for a very long time now and I do enjoy it, I don't like standing in line and don't like crowds. I do think there is a better way though, I probably wouldn't have said that prior to someone voting for me and I would like to see a secure online voting profile.

 

[Gatordev]

I may be misunderstanding the law, but I thought changing your drivers license to a different state was one of the most foolproof/certain methods of establishing residency somewhere? The mere act itself was method of telling the new state that you are choosing to be a resident there?

If I did that here in California, I have no doubt they would immediately be after me for state income tax.

"Residency" has several legal meanings and people tend to throw them altogether thinking it's a one and done type of thing. Throw in CA and it's own special way of doing things and it gets more confusing.

You can have a voting residency, a tax residency, and/or a domicile/non-domicile residency. One does not infer the others. We're all familiar with dealing with CA on the active-duty side, but these different classifications of residency can also apply to civilians.

When I was contracting in CA, I was still a FL resident. I had a FL license and I was registered to vote in FL. I actually couldn't prove I even had a residence in CA since I didn't have a lease or utility bill. However, I did have "CA" attached to my tax information for my employer and I had a CA vehicle registration due to CA motor vehicle law (and more importantly, car insurance).

The final result of all of that was since I spent a certain amount of time in the state over a tax year that was below their threshold, CA could only legally tax me on my CA income because I had maintained proof that all of my other residency classifications were still in FL. But if I had stayed in the state long enough, my tax residency would have been CA and ALL of my income would have been fair game even though I still had FL residency for everything else.

Bonus tax trivia...according to CA tax law (forgetting any Part 121 or 135 employees), ANY time you enter the state on business you're supposed to pay CA taxes, even if it's for 3 days on a business trip and you return to a tax-free state. Of course no one ever does that because...F U California.

 

[Spekkio]

It gets real muddy, real quick for people who work across state lines or travel frequently for work because you're dealing with multiple state laws about what constitutes being a resident and they don't all match.

Most states only require you to file a non-resident or part-year resident return if you have sourced income from that state that exceeds their standard deduction. CA wants you to file as a non-resident no matter what, even though you will end up just doing a paperwork drill to pay $0. That's probably why the state doesn't bother going after most people who pass through for a week unless they're an athlete, celebrity, etc.

Thankfully, the SCRA bypasses all this stuff for servicemembers.