Poppagator assured McGrath:

Your residency (address) can affect your eligibility for voting in local elections in a given jurisdiction, but any American citizen can vote for President regardless of how recently he/she might have moved.

Poppagator, I don't know what state you live in, but that's not my understanding, in Indiana or in Minnesota, where I spent my first 30 years. It may be that what you say would be just and desirable, but I don't think it's so, at least in most jurisdictions.

Voting laws in the United States are creatures of state law. Every state has its own requirements; there are no federal voting qualification rules. The Constitution requires the states to be evenhanded and nondiscriminatory in its rules (supposedly), but all of the details are set by the respective states.

Remember that the individual does not vote for President; he votes for an Elector (or maybe it's a set of Electors), and it's on a state basis. The Constitution says nothing about how Electors are chosen; it's left up to the states. Originally they were chosen by the respective state legislatures, just as Senators were, though today I believe all states provide for popular election of Electors. If you mark your ballot for Schultz for president, you're really voting for a slate of Electors pledged to enter their electoral votes for Schultz. Some states award all their electoral votes based on winner-take-all, while some apportion them roughly according to the vote percentages.

So Electors, although provided for by the Constitution, are in effect officers of the particular state. You can think of them as representatives from the state to a third house of the federal legislature which meets only once in four years, for a single issue, the selection of the chief magistrate and his vice. (In actual fact, the Electoral College does not actually meet at all, but electoral votes are submitted to Washington by mail.)

Residency requirements have at least two purposes. In no order of importance, they are:
1. What you evidently refer to, that the local folks who are to be represented in state matters choose their public officers, uninfluenced by "furriners".
2. To help control voter fraud, e.g. individuals voting in multiple districts.

I have never been aware of a nonresident being allowed to "partially register", only to vote on presidential matters. If you think that would be desirable, I think it would probably take a Constitutional Amendment.

And current residency with cutoff dates is important so that local voting authorities have time to do administrative things before election time, such as providing enough polling place personnel for the traffic, providing enough paper ballots if appropriate, and of course checking the qualifications of registrants.

I can assure you, Poppagator, that if you move to Indiana on November 1st you will not be allowed to vote either for local and state officials or in whose presidential electors are to be chosen.

If I'm wrong, give me details, please.

Dave Oesterreich