My county has a live-in program. His stuff would probably already be on the curb. Even live-ins are required to maintain a separate primary residence, so if he registered to vote from the station he'd be given a nice sit-down where he was allowed to choose whether he committed voter fraud by registering in a place that wasn't his primary residence, or he lied to the department about his primary residence and would just be fired.
It looks like the Chief was actually bending over backwards to try to help this kid and got fucked by him in return.
I used to work EMS. We had bases for each of the ambulance crews scattered throughout the counties we covered. We had explicit rules about not being allowed to basically establish residency in the manner LAOP appears to be trying to do. It's one thing to work 24, 48, or 72 hours at a time (depending on your shift) and basically living in the base during those times; it's another to live there even when you're not on shift. Also, something no one in either thread (here or in the OP) has addressed is liability insurances: most EMS and fire companies don't allow what LAOP is doing strictly because of issues with liability, worker's comp, etc. and have a lot of restrictions that prevent someone from basically establishing residency in the manner LAOP is trying to do. (We had this issue come up at the service I worked with and had to fire the employee to get them to stop staying at the base seven days a week because they were interfering with business, putting the company's liability insurance at risk, and just generally causing issues with their on-base/on-shift coworkers.)
It honestly hasn’t seemed to occur to him that the most likely result of all of this is for him to be tossed out on his ear - either from staying at the firehouse, or as a firefighter at all. Like, tomorrow, since he doesn’t reside there and doesn’t need to be evicted. I’m hoping that this is just an entertaining exercise in arguing on the internet.
I feel like this arrangement has been in existence so long with most firefighters not rocking the boat that they just forgot to make it clear that he has to have a separate legal residence even if he doesn't normally reside there. Or that this guy doesn't understand the idea of legal fictions and that ultimately the letter of the law is what matters.
I'm actually leaning towards the latter given how stubborn his responses were in the comments. Who wants to bet that if this goes to court, he represents himself?
The problem with having those understandings is that eventually someone doesn't know to keep things limited, they rock the boat, insist on rocking the boat, and force new rules to be made.
This is why stores deliberately destroy spoiled food. They don't just throw it away, they actively destroy it. Its because someone didn't know to keep the understanding.
It used to be that if there was a damaged product no longer sellable but still good, stores would let employees eat it or take it home. A grocery store deli and there's a little bit of hot food at closing that hasn't been sold yet? Take it home, no one will mind. There's a damaged bag of Halloween candy thats been ripped open while stocking? Take it home, its fine.
The problem is that there's one guy who ruins it for everyone. This is the guy who puts in 20 pounds of chicken wings in the deli only 5 minutes before closing. This is the guy who deliberately "accidentally" rips product packaging.
"Oops, I guess no one will eat these 20 pounds of chicken wings I better take them home for myself."
Its all because someone got greedy and stupid and now there's no longer an understanding, and what used to be a good thing for everyone is no longer possible to maintain.
I mean, sure, but that's also a failure of management. Fire that guy. Document it. Go through the steps and the process. If he claims it's an honest mistake, say "I don't believe you" and call him a liar. I promise you, the guy who's abusing the system is not a critical worker who can't possibly be replaced.
So many of these problems are management refusing to deal with actual bad actors and pretending good faith where there transparently is none.
For as much as "at will" employment gets thrown around, people will still sue you in all 49 at will employment states for wrongful termination, and even if they don't have a case will tie you up with a paid on contingency lawyer who is expecting you to fold and write a check for $10,000 to go away, of which he'll get half of it
I had someone at my store get in trouble for that, breaking stuff to take it home. I get the reasoning ‘multi million dollar companies can cover the loss.’ But it still isn’t going to go over well when someone inevitably finds out.
I just really really want to know more about the other party who both cared so damn much about where OP was registered to vote and then called the chief about it! Like wtf, thats a wild level of busybody activity.
I mean, does he? It's not a place you can legally live, any more than you can nail together a plywood box and put a sleeping bag into it and stick it on a street corner and then claim it as your legal residence. It's the place you live, and you may actually be able to prove that and register to vote there, but you're still unhoused.
Edited to add: IANAL, and I'm triply not an expert in this area of the law.
If I stay at my partner’s place, let go of my current lease, and stay only there, then I reside there. Just because my partner’s lease says I’m not allowed to, doesn’t mean I don’t in reality reside there.
OOP resides there, and only there. They probably agreed not to do that, which will result in problems with their employer/landlord.
Yeah, but your partner's place is presumably a house/apartment/condo or the ilk. The firehouse is a government facility, it just happens to have beds in it. You can sleep on the couch in your office every night for three months - it's been done plenty of times - but I'm skeptical that many locales would agree that the company can't simply fire you and make you leave once you're caught and needs to evict you instead.
Wait, I thought landlords put no overnight guests in leases specifically so unauthorized parties can't get legal tenancy. Isn't it there so a friend of the renter can't just stay there for three nights and automatically become a new legal tenant? Because they were specifically not authorized to live there?
Similarly, if squatters break into your home while you are on vacation, and they reside there for three nights, they also don't automatically become your tenants, because they weren't authorized to be there.
The first paragraph is why landlords want it, to avoid people becoming residents, yes. Because if people do it, they become residents.
The lease holder might be violating the lease, which can lead to the landlord evicting them and their sub-lessee. But they would still need to go through an actual eviction.
Squatters is different, and almost never happens. In my example, my partner authorized me to be there. In OOP’s example, their employer authorized them to be there.
I'm actually curious how that will work, because, in this scenario, if your partner signed a lease for no overnight guests, then they are not actually allowed to give authorization. Similarly, if you booked a house sitter for example, and they "authorized" their friends to stay for 3 nights, would the friends get tenant rights?
In most locations, three nights is not enough. It’s location specific. But yes, if you are given a sublease against the rules of a lease, you are a tenant after enough time. And an eviction process would need to proceed to get you out.
In some jurisdictions (California is one) the only requirement to become a tenant of a property (and therefore tenant rights) is spending 30 or more consecutive days as a resident there. "Not a place where people can legally reside" and "Didn't have explicit permission to reside" doesn't enter into it.
You can simultaneously be a tenant *and* be prosecuted for illegally living somewhere you're not allowed to live, and the latter will override the former.
Normally this happens when a house is condemned and the tenants discover that technically they live there but in practice they can't.
It is surprisingly difficult to google to either support or dispute this, other than just being within the borders of the state for long enough without a domicile elsewhere will make you a resident of the state - which I think we all already expected. What did come up immediately, however, is that it is illegal in California to live in anything that is not zoned for it (though the examples were more things like storage units and sheds and illegal ADOs), which can get the person fined or arrested, which seems likely to make the point moot. (Living in things like cars varies by jurisdiction, though.)
[PA] My place of residence is telling me I can’t use that address for my voter registration.
Location: Pennsylvania
Hello all. This one may be a bit complicated, so here is some background. I am a volunteer firefighter in Pennsylvania and I live at the firehouse. My department has a live-in program. Essentially, you can live at the firehouse and, in exchange, you are required to staff the firehouse for a specified number of hours per week. It is a mutually beneficial arrangement that allows the department to ensure staffing and allows people to take advantage of free housing.
Our contract states that we cannot use the firehouse address as our residential address or to receive mail. I’ve never made a big deal about it, because I understand them not wanting a ton of personal mail coming to the firehouse, especially from people who may not live there anymore. I have a PO Box that I check every so often and I haven’t really had too many issues (except with UPS, but that’s a whole separate problem). My PO Box is also the address listed on my license.
I have used the firehouse address on exactly four occasions. Once was to receive a package that was for the department. Once each when listing my physical address on my Global Entry application and an ATF Form. Neither of these forms permit the use of a PO Box and require your physical living address. For the Global Entry application, I even had the chief write me a letter indicating that I reside there, because they wanted proof of residency. The last time is on my voter registration, where I listed my PO Box as my mailing address. I had previously kept my voter registration at my parents’ address, as they lived in the same county, albeit a different municipality; however, they have since moved to another county, so I changed it.
Someone today tried to make a comment about me not being a resident of the township and my response was, “Check my voter registration”. They asked if I used the firehouse address and I said I had, and used my PO Box as the mailing address. Long story short, they did not like being called out for being wrong, so they went to the chief and complained that I was using the firehouse address as my personal address. I received an angry phone call from the chief yelling at me about this. I explained that I used my PO Box as my mailing address, but that I do live at the firehouse, so that’s where I registered to vote. I also explained that if I registered to vote anywhere else, it would be voter fraud. I asked where he expected me to register to vote, and his response was, “Not there”.
Is it legal for them to tell me I can’t use the firehouse address for my voter registration? Also, is it legal to tell me I can’t receive mail there, where I live? Not sure if there are any state or federal laws that would address this. I don’t know if this living arrangement would be considered a tenancy or not. If it matters, the department is part of the township government, so I don’t know if a municipal government impeding someone’s ability to vote would change anything. It is not my intention to cause problems, but I am also not one to accept being yelled at unless I have actually done something wrong. Thank you in advance and sorry for the long post.
EDIT: This is not a political issue, although I understand why some might question if it were.
EDIT 2: We are not paid. We are volunteer. We do receive a stipend through an incentive program, but it is considered a “nominal fee” under FLSA, not a wage.
Cat fact: cats will register to vote at firehouses whether you like it or not
I'm confused as to how the OP says 'check my voter registration' as a gotcha in the main body of the post but then acts like they had no idea that the government or anyone else could check their voter registration all the way down in the comments...
LAOP probably had a different political/regional opinion (think local rivalries for the latter), and the other party felt that meant they can't live in <town>.
People challenging candidacies based on proof of residence occurs, yes.
That said, I strongly doubt that's the situation with OP. They kind of seem like a numbskull that got into an argument with someone, and didn't know when to shut up regarding their living situation.
My guess is someone got a little too mouthy about something like needing bullshit like voter Id laws to prevent "illegals" and "outsiders" from ruining their town (surely a problem in a place a Pennsylvania that can't even afford a professional Fire Department) and someone pointed out that this dude was one of the outsiders doing exactly that.
I've lived in my village for twenty years and bought my home in 2010, yet some locals still feel my opinions on how things should be done aren't valid because I wasn't born here.
Better than that, I remember some essay I read some years ago. The author said the locals looked askance at him and his family because the came from out of state. He related the following exchange.
"My kids are locals. They were born here."
"Just because a cat might give birth in in an oven, that doesn't make her kittens muffins"
I spent a decade looking for a local here. Someone would say "I'm not a local, I wasn't born here." Then I'd find someone who was born here and they'd say "I'm not a local, my parents weren't born here." Etc, etc.
Finally I find someone who's family was born and died here since before this was a town. I said "so you're an honest to goodness local?"
They replied "No, I'm not a local, there's no street named after my family."
And that's the day I decided this was all very silly, declared myself a local, and I am apparently the only local here 😅
My job sent me to work for 6 months in a small southern town. A local told me "It's not enough to have been born here. It's not enough to have been conceived here. You must have been thought of here."
That seems like it might be a variant of the quip attributed to Lord Wellington: "If a man is born in a stable, that does not make him a horse.
He was born in Ireland and, as you might have guessed, wasn't too fond of the Irish nobility. About the rest of the Irish he doesn't seem to have had much to say other than that they made for decent soldiers.
I have had people say something similar to me, because I wasn’t born here. To an extent, I get it because this is an area where you really do have a lot of seasonal residents, transplants who ruin things, drive housing costs, create traffic.
Problem is, I moved here when I was 14. It wasn’t exactly a choice. So for all intents and purposes, yes, I am a local. I have lived and work here for 25 years. And yet there is always someone who thinks that my input on something doesn’t count because I was not born here
I was born in Los Angeles, but I haven’t been since I was in middle school. My opinion on local matters of LA mean nothing. I haven’t even driven a car there, but for some reason, people think that my domain is LA
It also doesn’t help that I am just under 5 feet tall, and I have to reassert myself as the homeowner of my property. As if I haven’t established myself here, as if I don’t have my name on the deed, as if I don’t pay POA every year and HOA every quarter, as if I don’t pay property tax.
I'm annoyed but not really surprised that the great legal minds over there are interpreting this as the evil government landlord suppressing the voting rights of a tenant. It's almost like none of them actually know how live-in firefighter programs work, just projected a few assumptions LAOPs totally well-researched and not self-serving version of events, and leapt to his defense with all their legal skills.
I'm a volunteer medic at a department that has a live-in firefighter program. All the live-in program does is give you a waiver from the normal regulation that you can't spend more than three nights in a row at the station between shifts. If they're nice, you get a private room. The default is that firefighters live at the station when they work, and they might stay at the station between shifts. Our live-in program is very specific that you need to maintain a separate primary residence, that you have no tenant rights at the station any more than the guy who hates his wife and kids and stays at the station between the 20 shifts he works a month, and that very specifically and IIRC in bold letters you cannot use the station as a mailing address. Which is reduntant, because it's already against department policy for anyone to use the station as a mailing address.
TLDR: At least in my state live-in programs require you to have a separate primary residence, and explicitly don't allow you to use the station as a residence, so no, you can't register to vote from there.
This makes perfect sense to me. But for the fact the whole system is clearly designed as a mutually beneficial reciprocal arrangement (volunteers get housing, fire house gets volunteers). But that then falls down as soon as you get to the ‘must maintain another primary residence’
Presumably anyone for whom bunking in a firehouse is a good housing situation, isn’t going to also be able to maintain a separate primary residence.
Then OPs point is also valid, they legally must be allowed to register to vote, they legally cannot lie about where they are living on their registration to vote.
So the whole system is a house of cards waiting to fall down. Or it’s just based on the idea that no one checks too hard and no one gets to vote?
Or a lot of people are doing what LAOP used to be doing and maintaining a "residence" with a friend or family member that they're not actually staying with very often.
IMO he's stubbornly ignoring everyone giving him this advice. They're saying it with plausible deniability--like, they're not saying "pretend to live with a friend you don't really live with"--and he's using that plausible deniability to stick his fingers in his ears.
Hard to tell if he's ignoring it or just not getting it. LAOP strikes me as the sort of person who operates in a world where the law is reasonable and skirting the law is something bad people do. Not "sometimes the law has counterintuitive results and certain arrangements work because everyone has decided to politely pretend that something else is going on."
I think the system is built on "This is pretty much for students and people going into firefighting as a career," and LAOPs chief gave him a little too much slack. The expectation is that you're volunteering while you go to class or getting through your application process, not that you're homeless and volunteering so you have a roof over your head.
projected a few assumptions LAOPs totally well-researched and not self-serving version of events
This is one of the most common tropes on reddit, and one of the most annoying ones. People read posts and take the telling of events at face value, instead of realizing they are reading about an occurrence from a single point-of-view (generally from the purported "victim"). That is, unless the poster is flagrantly arrogant or an obvious asshole, often the responses are on their side with zero critical thinking or realizing the poster may be misinterpreting events.
Well I can imagine this particular fire station messing up and not having those explicit rules. In which case they might've created a situation where LAOP is a tenant or something, which is what those rules are meant to avoid.
Then again, I wouldn't be surprised if LAOP missed those rules.
That's a tough one - did a government agency fuck up or is an LAOP selectively interpreting the law? I'm not really sure I can choose. I'm just going to call this a question for the philosophers.
More or less, volunteer fire departments are essential and do great work but they aren't really well known for their strong oversight and big budgets to hire policy experts or lawyers.
TLDR: At least in my state live-in programs require you to have a separate primary residence, and explicitly don't allow you to use the station as a residence, so no, you can't register to vote from there.
I suspect that they do so in an effort to tip-toe around tenancy protections and employment laws in the state. Probably in ways that wouldn't stand up to a close look by the courts or regulators.
The funny thing is, he mentioned that the station itself is zoned as an industrial building, so it probably can't legally be a residence even if they wanted it to. I'm not sure what the procedure would be trying to sue for tenancy in a place the government says can't have tenants. Though I suppose if you can register to vote with an abandoned warehouse as your residence, you can at least vote from a fire station.
In the town where I used to live, there was a woman who ended up being, for a while, the only vote in her precinct. She lived on-site at a hospital she worked at, and was the only one who did so, and was allowed to register from there. But the local business owners had specifically had the precinct drawn to include zero voters so that they could just do whatever they wanted. Her vote became very sought after lol.
Now, since it's a volunteer department there's a chance it's not actually a government agency or subdivision, but if it is organized by the city or county, or is itself a stand alone government agency that just happens to be using volunteers, the zoning of the building doesn't really matter. The government can build and do whatever they want, zoning be damned
Separately, if it's a private non-profit org operating the department, they could've gotten a variance for the zoning that would allow that use but not actually change the underlying zoning.
Plus, in most places I've lived there is a specific "institutional" zoning that would apply to any government buildings, so a fire station would not be a valid use of an industrial zone anyway whether someone is living there or not
> Our live-in program is very specific [...] that you have no tenant rights at the station
Depending on the jurisdiction, it might not mean fuck for shit what your program says about anything when it comes to establishing tenancy. Having a "primary residence" somewhere else can be equally irrelevant. Same goes for any mailing addresses and voter registration. In many places, time spent in residency is the only factor that matters.
Bluntly, I don't think there's any jurisdiction in the country where you can establish residency at a non-residential government building just by staying there too long. You might be able to stretch it into some adverse possession thing, though that takes 20 years in PA so hopefully he's found a spot of his own by then, there's a huge step between "I was a guest at this residence long enough I'm now a tenant at this residence," and "I slept enough in a government building that now the government building is my residence." Your first obstacle would be convincing the landlord/tenant court they actually have any jurisdiction.
Regardless, what's the next step? Let's say he somehow convinces a judge that legally, he should have become a resident of the fire station after 30 days. Can they still keep him out because it's a government building and he was fired, or do they escort him to his cot and make sure he doesn't wander too far from it? Who sets that distance? Can he get thrown out anyway because it's not a residential building and it's illegal for him to use as a residence? Can the fire department get in trouble for being a shitty landlord because those pesky fire alarms prevent his quiet enjoyment of his cot-closet? Are we going to grant tenancy to the WalMart manager who's been sleeping in his office because of he got caught cheating with the girl from housewares, and if so does he get the whole store or just his office and enough of the appliances department to have access to a kitchen? Since we're talking firefighters here, how do we apply fire codes to those commercial or industrial zoned buildings that some judge ruled a person can live in? For that matter, even after you win the case you have to pay rent. What's the fair market value of a closet with a cot in it, and can the judge force him to keep volunteering or is this a cash situation now? One of those sounds like slavery. Do rent payments go directly to the fire department or is this more a general fund thing, and how do we account for this new revenue stream in government budgets?
There's issues beyond just claiming "I slept here enough times so now it's my residence," when you're not discussing a residential property. You could easily argue the main reason the fire department doesn't let you claim it as a residence isn't because they're worried about evictions (at least where I live, employer-provided housing can evict you as soon as you're fired without court involvement) but that it's not legal for it to be your residence in the first place.
Sorry for the long stream of consciousness rant, my power was supposed to be out for an hour this morning due to construction and it's been four hours now.
There's also the issue of this (potentially) being a government building. Is the government subject to tenants rights laws? There are a lot of laws and rights that you may have against private companies that the government is exempt from. Even if this scheme would've worked if he tried it by sleeping at a Walmart for 30 days, it may not work against the government
Yeah, plenty of landlords try the technique of having tenants sign away all their rights in a lease, which is part of why those rights exist in the first place. I'm not a lawyer and have no idea what the actual answer is for OP or other firefighters, but it certainly wouldn't be the first time that someone had tenancy rights despite the landlord trying to claim otherwise.
Someone today tried to make a comment about me not being a resident of the township and my response was, “Check my voter registration”. They asked if I used the firehouse address and I said I had, and used my PO Box as the mailing address. Long story short, they did not like being called out for being wrong, so they went to the chief and complained that I was using the firehouse address as my personal address.
Personally, I'm deeply curious about who the "someone" is, and how this even came up and got to this point in the first place.
It's giving 'beefing other residents in the local news outlet's Facebook comment section'. That or a NextDoor local-politics fight that's got reaaallly out of hand
I agree that this comes off as the result of a facebook argument. OP is being really vague about why his residency was questioned, and definitely seems naively arrogant enough to get into facebook/twitter spats while letting others know his personal details.
probably some discussion about an upcoming local election or something that the city council had done. I can easily see ways it could come up and somebody saying "why would you care you don't even live in the town"
some people did bring up that homeless people often are advised to use a local shelter as their adress. Others said that you can even write something like ''corner between Bridge street and Tree road''. So it seems like there are options for people who genuinely don't have a residential adress they can use
From the title, I was expecting a follower of SovCit guru Brandon Joe Williams. Among other things, he claims that he is neither a resident of the US nor of a specific state. He is merely domiciled in California.
Even though born in the US, he is also not a US Citizen, because only Negroes (his term) can be US Citizens. And not just any Negro, only descendants of freed African slaves. It's based on his extensive legal research, including the Dred Scott decision, the 14th Amendment, a bunch of 19th Century SCOTUS decisions, the UCC, and, of course, Black's Law Dictionary.
Since he's not a US Citizen and not a US resident, he can't file income taxes, as he's have to declare under penalty of perjury that he is one or the other. In his words, "If I paid income taxes, I'd be in prison."
Don't even try to understand it. Besides being the greatest legal scholar since Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, he is also the best writer of legal documents to ever wield a pen or keyboard. at least, according to him. Opposing counsel in one of his lawsuits described his filings as "prolix and incomprehensible." That's about right. He even threw his racial claims into one, stating that he is "whiter than Caspar."
If you want to go down that rabbit hole, head over to the anti-SovCit r/sovereigncitizen and look for posts featuring "BJW." (Go away, autocorrect. If I meant "Soviet," I'd type "Soviet."
Sounds like typical sovcit nonsense to me. I've had one or two friends over the years that bought into it, and it's usually that they've selectively interpreted (or, often, wholesale misinterpreted) a handful of very specific laws or court cases ultimately as a justification to do whatever they're trying to do.
Never have I seen a SovCit whose interpretation of the law did not benefit them in some way. It's always shit like, not having to pay taxes, or having certain laws not apply to them that they don't want to abide by.
Fun related fact - Canadian sov cits recognize that they can’t use most of the decisions US sov cits use, so for some reason they rely on the Magna Carta for a lot of their “legal backing”
Our little township has a fire dept. with paid firefighters and EMTs funded by our taxes not volunteers. Honestly for all the hard work they do I wouldn't mind some of my tax dollars letting them spend their off time in the fire house. I have too much respect for what they do. Same reason I always vote for their levy renewals.
I got banned from that sub for providing accurate legal information one too many times, but the obvious answer is that OP is legally homeless and should register to vote as homeless.
I'm confused about people suggesting alternatives to the fire house address, or whether or not the fire house counts as a residential address. Like we are supposed to register to vote using the address of the place we live, yes? Using an address that OP doesn't live at sounds like voter fraud.
The longer back and forth about firehouses being exempt from formal residences, and the department trying to avoid being a formal landlord, tracked for me. Fire departments are just generally weird in being both an essential service run by the government and often volunteer. Lot of gray area there.
Voting regulations address that. The firehouse isn't allowed to be his primary residence and you're supposed to vote where your primary residence is. But it's PA so really all OOP should have to do is submit a map with a dot on it and just not explicitly say they reside there.
The voting regs in PA just say you have to have lived there for 30 days. It doesnt distinguish between primary residences and other kinds of residences.
At least in my state, live-in firefighters aren't allowed to use the station as a primary residence, and it's made very explicit during the process both that they need to have a separate residence, and they can't use the station as a mailing address because it's not a residence.
Also, it took me like three minutes of research to find out PA doesn't require you to have a residence in order to register to vote (you can even include a map with a dot on it showing where you hang out) and that you can use a separate mailing address from your actual residence, so I think LAOP is just being intentionally obtuse.
It sounds like it. I think LAOP is trying to push boundaries, which is really dumb if you are skirting homelessness with technicalities like he is. Its the old "only break one law at a time" rule. I might be willing to say, he has a safety net, sure be the test case. But PA already seems to cover the issues of homelessness and voting, so there isn't anything to win here.
It sounds like OP used a separate mailing address, and they listed their residence as accurately as possible, though.
Like you can register to vote where you sleep most of the time, yes? That address may or may not be permanent (e.g. college students can choose to vote at their campus). So OP could be perceived as having 3 addresses: mailing (PO box), permanent residence (their parents'), and temporary residence (the firehouse).
It's a bit like being a college student. Did I live for a substantial period of time in location X? Yes, but that wasn't my legal residence. So I couldn't vote there and if I was called for jury duty it would be in the area of my primary residence.
You could think of it like a construction worker on a long-term hotel stay. They're there for work but it's not their home. OOP doesn't actually stay somewhere else, but they're supposed to and absolutely could only sleep at the firehouse when they're working.
Goes for military and their families, too. I was called for jury duty in New York. That was our legal residence, but I was actually living in southern Italy. I wrote to them, explained, and said I would be happy to serve if they paid my roundtrip airfare and hotel room. They declined.
Rules may have changed since I was in college, but I registered in the state where I attended school even though I was from a different state (i.e. my parents lived in a different state.) I don't think there was a mechanism for the Board of Elections to check whether I still considered my childhood home to be "home." I was over 18, and I lived where I lived.
It varies by state, but most states will allow you to vote in the state where you attend college. No points for guessing which states are the ones throwing up barriers to that.
I went to school out of state, but received a reciprocal scholarship that gave me cheaper tuition. In order to maintain my scholarship, I couldn't claim my college state as my residence, so I couldn't vote there. But then I got screwed over by my program and had to take a 5th year to get my degree, and my scholarship only lasted 4 years. So summer after my 4th year, I had to scramble to change my residency so I could qualify for in-state tuition. Which was a whole mess in and of itself, because my landlord never gave me a formal lease and didn't have any bills in my name at my then-address.
Most states (all the ones I've lived in) allow you to, actually. As long as you aren't voting in two states, you're good even if you're registered in both. And it's really common to be on the rolls in multiple states.
I moved from NYC in 2020 and was still getting mayoral primary texts earlier this year. I think it might have been an old list because I saw something about data taken or requested by Musk's people so I checked and I'm FINALLY off the rolls there after 5 years of not voting in NY since I, yaknow, have been voting in my new state instead. I was definitely getting NYC mayoral spam in 2021 and last year was a grab bag from volunteer orgs as to what state they were asking me to volunteer in lol.
Wonder how long my current state will keep me on the rolls in 2 years when I move. It's a swing state, so if I move to another swing state, I'll be truly inundated in 2028.
"You're good" is doing a lot of work there. The states are supposed to communicate with each other so you get taken off the rolls where you were previously registered, but it's a slow and inconsistent thing.
But as long as you don't vote in both places and you're not a public figure you probably get away with it.
You can actively unregister when you move. To, among other things, avoid some of the spam.
Never heard of unregistering to vote in New York. You can get your registration moved if you move within the state; maybe that's what you're thinking about? I helped with local campaigns and I'd regularly see people on the rolls who'd moved states several years before.
And yeah, it's not a problem. Someone looking can see that the first time I voted in my new state was after the last time I voted in the old. That's all that matters: that you aren't voting in two states at the same time. If I'd moved back, I believe i would have needed to fill out a new voter registration form to be legal and I would have needed a new driver's license anyways since my old one is voided.
A public figure would have their voter registration kept confidential in the first place so only the states/local governments would know. You do not receive confidential registrations even when your data request is for a campaign.
Registering to vote in the college town is one of the ways out-of-state students can establish residency to avoid paying out-of-state tuition at state universities.
When I was at school this was specifically not allowed. You had to live in the state for a certain period of time and then apply. Otherwise everyone would try it.
No it's not. There are specific rules about this in most states. If you're dependant (by federal dept of education rules) it's where your parents are residents. If you're independent, there are generally stipulations that include length of living there, that you're financially self supporting, and/or work a certain number of hours per week.
US law has the concepts of “domicile,” “residence,” and “citizenship.” I’ve been practicing law for 20 years, and I have only a fuzzy idea of how they fit together. Citizenship, I think I understand. I’m pretty sure “domicile” is the area where you plan to return even if you leave for a time, while “residence” is where you happen to be staying for more than a transient period and can be temporary or permanent . . . but if it mattered, I’d have to look it all up to be sure I’m using the terms correctly, because I’m not sure about the last one especially.
It’s a bit different, but mostly semantics. “Residence” is where you permanently reside and intent to return, no matter how long you are somewhere else and am pretty sure “domicile” is used interchangeably for legal, mostly jurisdictional, purposes.
Transients are marked as “no permanent residence” for legal purposes in some places.
The solution for those in a grey area is to get a private mailing address that is a physical address, not a PO Box at USPS.
It probably hinges on the legal definition of "residence" for that state. There's lots of examples of people using a "permanent" address or residence without actually spending much time there.
It's like a Sovereign Citizen became a volunteer fireman.
I was going to ask why OOP can't just ask one of their friends that lives elsewhere to allow them to list their house/apartment as their legal residence, but I can see how that would then open the friend up to the same concerns with tenancy rights if OOP stops living at the firehouse. Also, in more general terms, if OOP is this big of a hardheaded asshole to everyone he knows, the likelihood of him having friends is low, to say nothing of friends good enough to let him use their home as his legal residence on documents.
Does he actually live in the firehouse or does he just stay there, though? The fact that the firefighters can't use the address as their residential address makes me think that it's the latter.
The firehouse does not allow him to live there without a permanent address. He is flouting their rule.
By flouting their rule, he resides there. Which they don’t want him to do. And they might fire/kick him out due to that. Which would result in him being homeless.
Yea. Sounds like LAOP was using their parent's address for physical address stuff, but they moved. So rather than thinking about how he can do things without using the firehouse's address, he's now drawn attention to the legal loophole he was hiding in and is about to be kicked out.
Ever heard of "home of record"? That's where a military person (or certain government employees) and their dependents "live" for legal purposes. It's not fraudulent to claim your previous address -- it's required!
Ooft, anyone laying good odds on OP still living there in the new year?
My county has a live-in program. His stuff would probably already be on the curb. Even live-ins are required to maintain a separate primary residence, so if he registered to vote from the station he'd be given a nice sit-down where he was allowed to choose whether he committed voter fraud by registering in a place that wasn't his primary residence, or he lied to the department about his primary residence and would just be fired.
It looks like the Chief was actually bending over backwards to try to help this kid and got fucked by him in return.
I used to work EMS. We had bases for each of the ambulance crews scattered throughout the counties we covered. We had explicit rules about not being allowed to basically establish residency in the manner LAOP appears to be trying to do. It's one thing to work 24, 48, or 72 hours at a time (depending on your shift) and basically living in the base during those times; it's another to live there even when you're not on shift. Also, something no one in either thread (here or in the OP) has addressed is liability insurances: most EMS and fire companies don't allow what LAOP is doing strictly because of issues with liability, worker's comp, etc. and have a lot of restrictions that prevent someone from basically establishing residency in the manner LAOP is trying to do. (We had this issue come up at the service I worked with and had to fire the employee to get them to stop staying at the base seven days a week because they were interfering with business, putting the company's liability insurance at risk, and just generally causing issues with their on-base/on-shift coworkers.)
OP just needed a better lifehack, like, say, being Mike Solan, the head of Seattle's Police union.
https://southseattleemerald.org/news/2021/06/11/opa-finds-that-spd-officers-violated-policy-by-using-precincts-as-voting-addresses
It honestly hasn’t seemed to occur to him that the most likely result of all of this is for him to be tossed out on his ear - either from staying at the firehouse, or as a firefighter at all. Like, tomorrow, since he doesn’t reside there and doesn’t need to be evicted. I’m hoping that this is just an entertaining exercise in arguing on the internet.
I feel like this arrangement has been in existence so long with most firefighters not rocking the boat that they just forgot to make it clear that he has to have a separate legal residence even if he doesn't normally reside there. Or that this guy doesn't understand the idea of legal fictions and that ultimately the letter of the law is what matters.
I'm actually leaning towards the latter given how stubborn his responses were in the comments. Who wants to bet that if this goes to court, he represents himself?
The problem with having those understandings is that eventually someone doesn't know to keep things limited, they rock the boat, insist on rocking the boat, and force new rules to be made.
This is why stores deliberately destroy spoiled food. They don't just throw it away, they actively destroy it. Its because someone didn't know to keep the understanding.
It used to be that if there was a damaged product no longer sellable but still good, stores would let employees eat it or take it home. A grocery store deli and there's a little bit of hot food at closing that hasn't been sold yet? Take it home, no one will mind. There's a damaged bag of Halloween candy thats been ripped open while stocking? Take it home, its fine.
The problem is that there's one guy who ruins it for everyone. This is the guy who puts in 20 pounds of chicken wings in the deli only 5 minutes before closing. This is the guy who deliberately "accidentally" rips product packaging.
"Oops, I guess no one will eat these 20 pounds of chicken wings I better take them home for myself."
Its all because someone got greedy and stupid and now there's no longer an understanding, and what used to be a good thing for everyone is no longer possible to maintain.
I mean, sure, but that's also a failure of management. Fire that guy. Document it. Go through the steps and the process. If he claims it's an honest mistake, say "I don't believe you" and call him a liar. I promise you, the guy who's abusing the system is not a critical worker who can't possibly be replaced.
So many of these problems are management refusing to deal with actual bad actors and pretending good faith where there transparently is none.
Fire him for what? Its not against the rules.
Thats why a new rule gets created so he can be fired.
Now everyone else is bound by this new rule and that old understanding is gone, all because one person couldn't abide by an informal arrangement.
Fire him for being an at-will employee who didn't understand the tacit agreement that literally everyone else understood.
For as much as "at will" employment gets thrown around, people will still sue you in all 49 at will employment states for wrongful termination, and even if they don't have a case will tie you up with a paid on contingency lawyer who is expecting you to fold and write a check for $10,000 to go away, of which he'll get half of it
I had someone at my store get in trouble for that, breaking stuff to take it home. I get the reasoning ‘multi million dollar companies can cover the loss.’ But it still isn’t going to go over well when someone inevitably finds out.
There's a reason if a shop only has one camera, it's looking at the till
I know, he seems to be so focused on this amazing gotcha that he thinks he has that the obvious outcome has completely passed him by.
I just really really want to know more about the other party who both cared so damn much about where OP was registered to vote and then called the chief about it! Like wtf, thats a wild level of busybody activity.
OP was probably bragging about his life hack.
This feels correct given his certainty about his position!
Probably someone who found OOP totally insufferable.
He DOES reside there, which appears to be against the intentions of the program.
I mean, does he? It's not a place you can legally live, any more than you can nail together a plywood box and put a sleeping bag into it and stick it on a street corner and then claim it as your legal residence. It's the place you live, and you may actually be able to prove that and register to vote there, but you're still unhoused.
Edited to add: IANAL, and I'm triply not an expert in this area of the law.
If I stay at my partner’s place, let go of my current lease, and stay only there, then I reside there. Just because my partner’s lease says I’m not allowed to, doesn’t mean I don’t in reality reside there.
OOP resides there, and only there. They probably agreed not to do that, which will result in problems with their employer/landlord.
Yeah, but your partner's place is presumably a house/apartment/condo or the ilk. The firehouse is a government facility, it just happens to have beds in it. You can sleep on the couch in your office every night for three months - it's been done plenty of times - but I'm skeptical that many locales would agree that the company can't simply fire you and make you leave once you're caught and needs to evict you instead.
Wait, I thought landlords put no overnight guests in leases specifically so unauthorized parties can't get legal tenancy. Isn't it there so a friend of the renter can't just stay there for three nights and automatically become a new legal tenant? Because they were specifically not authorized to live there?
Similarly, if squatters break into your home while you are on vacation, and they reside there for three nights, they also don't automatically become your tenants, because they weren't authorized to be there.
The first paragraph is why landlords want it, to avoid people becoming residents, yes. Because if people do it, they become residents.
The lease holder might be violating the lease, which can lead to the landlord evicting them and their sub-lessee. But they would still need to go through an actual eviction.
Squatters is different, and almost never happens. In my example, my partner authorized me to be there. In OOP’s example, their employer authorized them to be there.
I'm actually curious how that will work, because, in this scenario, if your partner signed a lease for no overnight guests, then they are not actually allowed to give authorization. Similarly, if you booked a house sitter for example, and they "authorized" their friends to stay for 3 nights, would the friends get tenant rights?
In most locations, three nights is not enough. It’s location specific. But yes, if you are given a sublease against the rules of a lease, you are a tenant after enough time. And an eviction process would need to proceed to get you out.
In some jurisdictions (California is one) the only requirement to become a tenant of a property (and therefore tenant rights) is spending 30 or more consecutive days as a resident there. "Not a place where people can legally reside" and "Didn't have explicit permission to reside" doesn't enter into it.
You can simultaneously be a tenant *and* be prosecuted for illegally living somewhere you're not allowed to live, and the latter will override the former.
Normally this happens when a house is condemned and the tenants discover that technically they live there but in practice they can't.
It is surprisingly difficult to google to either support or dispute this, other than just being within the borders of the state for long enough without a domicile elsewhere will make you a resident of the state - which I think we all already expected. What did come up immediately, however, is that it is illegal in California to live in anything that is not zoned for it (though the examples were more things like storage units and sheds and illegal ADOs), which can get the person fined or arrested, which seems likely to make the point moot. (Living in things like cars varies by jurisdiction, though.)
Registration Bot
[PA] My place of residence is telling me I can’t use that address for my voter registration.
Cat fact: cats will register to vote at firehouses whether you like it or not
Trying to imagine the scenario in which this would come up. Why is someone telling them they don't live in their town?
I'm confused as to how the OP says 'check my voter registration' as a gotcha in the main body of the post but then acts like they had no idea that the government or anyone else could check their voter registration all the way down in the comments...
LAOP probably had a different political/regional opinion (think local rivalries for the latter), and the other party felt that meant they can't live in <town>.
The obvious scenario to me is that OP is running for office and someone is challenging their candidacy. I've seen it a few times.
People challenging candidacies based on proof of residence occurs, yes.
That said, I strongly doubt that's the situation with OP. They kind of seem like a numbskull that got into an argument with someone, and didn't know when to shut up regarding their living situation.
My guess is someone got a little too mouthy about something like needing bullshit like voter Id laws to prevent "illegals" and "outsiders" from ruining their town (surely a problem in a place a Pennsylvania that can't even afford a professional Fire Department) and someone pointed out that this dude was one of the outsiders doing exactly that.
That's a totally normal thing to come up? "You just don't get it because you don't live here" is a pretty common sentiment.
I've lived in my village for twenty years and bought my home in 2010, yet some locals still feel my opinions on how things should be done aren't valid because I wasn't born here.
Better than that, I remember some essay I read some years ago. The author said the locals looked askance at him and his family because the came from out of state. He related the following exchange.
"My kids are locals. They were born here."
"Just because a cat might give birth in in an oven, that doesn't make her kittens muffins"
I spent a decade looking for a local here. Someone would say "I'm not a local, I wasn't born here." Then I'd find someone who was born here and they'd say "I'm not a local, my parents weren't born here." Etc, etc.
Finally I find someone who's family was born and died here since before this was a town. I said "so you're an honest to goodness local?"
They replied "No, I'm not a local, there's no street named after my family."
And that's the day I decided this was all very silly, declared myself a local, and I am apparently the only local here 😅
My job sent me to work for 6 months in a small southern town. A local told me "It's not enough to have been born here. It's not enough to have been conceived here. You must have been thought of here."
That seems like it might be a variant of the quip attributed to Lord Wellington: "If a man is born in a stable, that does not make him a horse.
He was born in Ireland and, as you might have guessed, wasn't too fond of the Irish nobility. About the rest of the Irish he doesn't seem to have had much to say other than that they made for decent soldiers.
Biscuits. Isn’t it biscuits? If the cat has kittens in the oven, do you call them bis-kits?
And weirdly, I just said this yesterday for the first time in a decade and here it is.
In rural England it's often "are all 4 grandparents in the parish graveyard?"
I have had people say something similar to me, because I wasn’t born here. To an extent, I get it because this is an area where you really do have a lot of seasonal residents, transplants who ruin things, drive housing costs, create traffic.
Problem is, I moved here when I was 14. It wasn’t exactly a choice. So for all intents and purposes, yes, I am a local. I have lived and work here for 25 years. And yet there is always someone who thinks that my input on something doesn’t count because I was not born here
I was born in Los Angeles, but I haven’t been since I was in middle school. My opinion on local matters of LA mean nothing. I haven’t even driven a car there, but for some reason, people think that my domain is LA
It also doesn’t help that I am just under 5 feet tall, and I have to reassert myself as the homeowner of my property. As if I haven’t established myself here, as if I don’t have my name on the deed, as if I don’t pay POA every year and HOA every quarter, as if I don’t pay property tax.
I'm annoyed but not really surprised that the great legal minds over there are interpreting this as the evil government landlord suppressing the voting rights of a tenant. It's almost like none of them actually know how live-in firefighter programs work, just projected a few assumptions LAOPs totally well-researched and not self-serving version of events, and leapt to his defense with all their legal skills.
I'm a volunteer medic at a department that has a live-in firefighter program. All the live-in program does is give you a waiver from the normal regulation that you can't spend more than three nights in a row at the station between shifts. If they're nice, you get a private room. The default is that firefighters live at the station when they work, and they might stay at the station between shifts. Our live-in program is very specific that you need to maintain a separate primary residence, that you have no tenant rights at the station any more than the guy who hates his wife and kids and stays at the station between the 20 shifts he works a month, and that very specifically and IIRC in bold letters you cannot use the station as a mailing address. Which is reduntant, because it's already against department policy for anyone to use the station as a mailing address.
TLDR: At least in my state live-in programs require you to have a separate primary residence, and explicitly don't allow you to use the station as a residence, so no, you can't register to vote from there.
This makes perfect sense to me. But for the fact the whole system is clearly designed as a mutually beneficial reciprocal arrangement (volunteers get housing, fire house gets volunteers). But that then falls down as soon as you get to the ‘must maintain another primary residence’
Presumably anyone for whom bunking in a firehouse is a good housing situation, isn’t going to also be able to maintain a separate primary residence.
Then OPs point is also valid, they legally must be allowed to register to vote, they legally cannot lie about where they are living on their registration to vote.
So the whole system is a house of cards waiting to fall down. Or it’s just based on the idea that no one checks too hard and no one gets to vote?
Or a lot of people are doing what LAOP used to be doing and maintaining a "residence" with a friend or family member that they're not actually staying with very often.
IMO he's stubbornly ignoring everyone giving him this advice. They're saying it with plausible deniability--like, they're not saying "pretend to live with a friend you don't really live with"--and he's using that plausible deniability to stick his fingers in his ears.
Hard to tell if he's ignoring it or just not getting it. LAOP strikes me as the sort of person who operates in a world where the law is reasonable and skirting the law is something bad people do. Not "sometimes the law has counterintuitive results and certain arrangements work because everyone has decided to politely pretend that something else is going on."
I think the system is built on "This is pretty much for students and people going into firefighting as a career," and LAOPs chief gave him a little too much slack. The expectation is that you're volunteering while you go to class or getting through your application process, not that you're homeless and volunteering so you have a roof over your head.
This is one of the most common tropes on reddit, and one of the most annoying ones. People read posts and take the telling of events at face value, instead of realizing they are reading about an occurrence from a single point-of-view (generally from the purported "victim"). That is, unless the poster is flagrantly arrogant or an obvious asshole, often the responses are on their side with zero critical thinking or realizing the poster may be misinterpreting events.
Well I can imagine this particular fire station messing up and not having those explicit rules. In which case they might've created a situation where LAOP is a tenant or something, which is what those rules are meant to avoid.
Then again, I wouldn't be surprised if LAOP missed those rules.
That's a tough one - did a government agency fuck up or is an LAOP selectively interpreting the law? I'm not really sure I can choose. I'm just going to call this a question for the philosophers.
Calling a volunteer fire department in the boonies of Pennsylvania a "government agency" like that holds any weight is a stretch lol
Locally sponsored house of fire enthusiasts?
More or less, volunteer fire departments are essential and do great work but they aren't really well known for their strong oversight and big budgets to hire policy experts or lawyers.
I suspect that they do so in an effort to tip-toe around tenancy protections and employment laws in the state. Probably in ways that wouldn't stand up to a close look by the courts or regulators.
I bet that is a big part of it. They don't have to evict somebody from the firehouse.
The funny thing is, he mentioned that the station itself is zoned as an industrial building, so it probably can't legally be a residence even if they wanted it to. I'm not sure what the procedure would be trying to sue for tenancy in a place the government says can't have tenants. Though I suppose if you can register to vote with an abandoned warehouse as your residence, you can at least vote from a fire station.
In the town where I used to live, there was a woman who ended up being, for a while, the only vote in her precinct. She lived on-site at a hospital she worked at, and was the only one who did so, and was allowed to register from there. But the local business owners had specifically had the precinct drawn to include zero voters so that they could just do whatever they wanted. Her vote became very sought after lol.
Now, since it's a volunteer department there's a chance it's not actually a government agency or subdivision, but if it is organized by the city or county, or is itself a stand alone government agency that just happens to be using volunteers, the zoning of the building doesn't really matter. The government can build and do whatever they want, zoning be damned
Separately, if it's a private non-profit org operating the department, they could've gotten a variance for the zoning that would allow that use but not actually change the underlying zoning.
Plus, in most places I've lived there is a specific "institutional" zoning that would apply to any government buildings, so a fire station would not be a valid use of an industrial zone anyway whether someone is living there or not
> Our live-in program is very specific [...] that you have no tenant rights at the station
Depending on the jurisdiction, it might not mean fuck for shit what your program says about anything when it comes to establishing tenancy. Having a "primary residence" somewhere else can be equally irrelevant. Same goes for any mailing addresses and voter registration. In many places, time spent in residency is the only factor that matters.
Bluntly, I don't think there's any jurisdiction in the country where you can establish residency at a non-residential government building just by staying there too long. You might be able to stretch it into some adverse possession thing, though that takes 20 years in PA so hopefully he's found a spot of his own by then, there's a huge step between "I was a guest at this residence long enough I'm now a tenant at this residence," and "I slept enough in a government building that now the government building is my residence." Your first obstacle would be convincing the landlord/tenant court they actually have any jurisdiction.
Regardless, what's the next step? Let's say he somehow convinces a judge that legally, he should have become a resident of the fire station after 30 days. Can they still keep him out because it's a government building and he was fired, or do they escort him to his cot and make sure he doesn't wander too far from it? Who sets that distance? Can he get thrown out anyway because it's not a residential building and it's illegal for him to use as a residence? Can the fire department get in trouble for being a shitty landlord because those pesky fire alarms prevent his quiet enjoyment of his cot-closet? Are we going to grant tenancy to the WalMart manager who's been sleeping in his office because of he got caught cheating with the girl from housewares, and if so does he get the whole store or just his office and enough of the appliances department to have access to a kitchen? Since we're talking firefighters here, how do we apply fire codes to those commercial or industrial zoned buildings that some judge ruled a person can live in? For that matter, even after you win the case you have to pay rent. What's the fair market value of a closet with a cot in it, and can the judge force him to keep volunteering or is this a cash situation now? One of those sounds like slavery. Do rent payments go directly to the fire department or is this more a general fund thing, and how do we account for this new revenue stream in government budgets?
There's issues beyond just claiming "I slept here enough times so now it's my residence," when you're not discussing a residential property. You could easily argue the main reason the fire department doesn't let you claim it as a residence isn't because they're worried about evictions (at least where I live, employer-provided housing can evict you as soon as you're fired without court involvement) but that it's not legal for it to be your residence in the first place.
Sorry for the long stream of consciousness rant, my power was supposed to be out for an hour this morning due to construction and it's been four hours now.
There's also the issue of this (potentially) being a government building. Is the government subject to tenants rights laws? There are a lot of laws and rights that you may have against private companies that the government is exempt from. Even if this scheme would've worked if he tried it by sleeping at a Walmart for 30 days, it may not work against the government
Yeah, plenty of landlords try the technique of having tenants sign away all their rights in a lease, which is part of why those rights exist in the first place. I'm not a lawyer and have no idea what the actual answer is for OP or other firefighters, but it certainly wouldn't be the first time that someone had tenancy rights despite the landlord trying to claim otherwise.
Personally, I'm deeply curious about who the "someone" is, and how this even came up and got to this point in the first place.
It's giving 'beefing other residents in the local news outlet's Facebook comment section'. That or a NextDoor local-politics fight that's got reaaallly out of hand
I agree that this comes off as the result of a facebook argument. OP is being really vague about why his residency was questioned, and definitely seems naively arrogant enough to get into facebook/twitter spats while letting others know his personal details.
probably some discussion about an upcoming local election or something that the city council had done. I can easily see ways it could come up and somebody saying "why would you care you don't even live in the town"
Wow, he really did come just for validation, didn’t he.
I hope so. Because pushing any further on this in real life is a good way to get thrown out of the fire station
Aren't homeless people entitled to vote?
Yup! And he could also register as homeless, another solution he's refusing to listen to.
some people did bring up that homeless people often are advised to use a local shelter as their adress. Others said that you can even write something like ''corner between Bridge street and Tree road''. So it seems like there are options for people who genuinely don't have a residential adress they can use
This title sounds like a George Costanza bit.
"I've been living, Jerry... but I wanna RESIDE!" "Reside?" "Yeah, reside! Does a man not have a right to reside in his own castle?"
From the title, I was expecting a follower of SovCit guru Brandon Joe Williams. Among other things, he claims that he is neither a resident of the US nor of a specific state. He is merely domiciled in California.
Even though born in the US, he is also not a US Citizen, because only Negroes (his term) can be US Citizens. And not just any Negro, only descendants of freed African slaves. It's based on his extensive legal research, including the Dred Scott decision, the 14th Amendment, a bunch of 19th Century SCOTUS decisions, the UCC, and, of course, Black's Law Dictionary.
Since he's not a US Citizen and not a US resident, he can't file income taxes, as he's have to declare under penalty of perjury that he is one or the other. In his words, "If I paid income taxes, I'd be in prison."
He has a lot of followers who believe it.
… what?
Don't even try to understand it. Besides being the greatest legal scholar since Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, he is also the best writer of legal documents to ever wield a pen or keyboard. at least, according to him. Opposing counsel in one of his lawsuits described his filings as "prolix and incomprehensible." That's about right. He even threw his racial claims into one, stating that he is "whiter than Caspar."
If you want to go down that rabbit hole, head over to the anti-SovCit r/sovereigncitizen and look for posts featuring "BJW." (Go away, autocorrect. If I meant "Soviet," I'd type "Soviet."
Sounds like typical sovcit nonsense to me. I've had one or two friends over the years that bought into it, and it's usually that they've selectively interpreted (or, often, wholesale misinterpreted) a handful of very specific laws or court cases ultimately as a justification to do whatever they're trying to do.
Never have I seen a SovCit whose interpretation of the law did not benefit them in some way. It's always shit like, not having to pay taxes, or having certain laws not apply to them that they don't want to abide by.
Fun related fact - Canadian sov cits recognize that they can’t use most of the decisions US sov cits use, so for some reason they rely on the Magna Carta for a lot of their “legal backing”
Our little township has a fire dept. with paid firefighters and EMTs funded by our taxes not volunteers. Honestly for all the hard work they do I wouldn't mind some of my tax dollars letting them spend their off time in the fire house. I have too much respect for what they do. Same reason I always vote for their levy renewals.
Them living there between shifts isn't the problem. Them establishing residency and having to be evicted is the problem.
I got banned from that sub for providing accurate legal information one too many times, but the obvious answer is that OP is legally homeless and should register to vote as homeless.
I'm confused about people suggesting alternatives to the fire house address, or whether or not the fire house counts as a residential address. Like we are supposed to register to vote using the address of the place we live, yes? Using an address that OP doesn't live at sounds like voter fraud.
The longer back and forth about firehouses being exempt from formal residences, and the department trying to avoid being a formal landlord, tracked for me. Fire departments are just generally weird in being both an essential service run by the government and often volunteer. Lot of gray area there.
Sure, but I kind of doubt that those exemptions specifically address voting.
Voting regulations address that. The firehouse isn't allowed to be his primary residence and you're supposed to vote where your primary residence is. But it's PA so really all OOP should have to do is submit a map with a dot on it and just not explicitly say they reside there.
The voting regs in PA just say you have to have lived there for 30 days. It doesnt distinguish between primary residences and other kinds of residences.
At least in my state, live-in firefighters aren't allowed to use the station as a primary residence, and it's made very explicit during the process both that they need to have a separate residence, and they can't use the station as a mailing address because it's not a residence.
Also, it took me like three minutes of research to find out PA doesn't require you to have a residence in order to register to vote (you can even include a map with a dot on it showing where you hang out) and that you can use a separate mailing address from your actual residence, so I think LAOP is just being intentionally obtuse.
It sounds like it. I think LAOP is trying to push boundaries, which is really dumb if you are skirting homelessness with technicalities like he is. Its the old "only break one law at a time" rule. I might be willing to say, he has a safety net, sure be the test case. But PA already seems to cover the issues of homelessness and voting, so there isn't anything to win here.
It sounds like OP used a separate mailing address, and they listed their residence as accurately as possible, though.
Like you can register to vote where you sleep most of the time, yes? That address may or may not be permanent (e.g. college students can choose to vote at their campus). So OP could be perceived as having 3 addresses: mailing (PO box), permanent residence (their parents'), and temporary residence (the firehouse).
It's a bit like being a college student. Did I live for a substantial period of time in location X? Yes, but that wasn't my legal residence. So I couldn't vote there and if I was called for jury duty it would be in the area of my primary residence.
You could think of it like a construction worker on a long-term hotel stay. They're there for work but it's not their home. OOP doesn't actually stay somewhere else, but they're supposed to and absolutely could only sleep at the firehouse when they're working.
Goes for military and their families, too. I was called for jury duty in New York. That was our legal residence, but I was actually living in southern Italy. I wrote to them, explained, and said I would be happy to serve if they paid my roundtrip airfare and hotel room. They declined.
College students absolutely can vote where they go to school if they prefer, at least in my state. It's a whole point of controversy.
Oh I should be clear, I went to school out of state. So I couldn't register in the other state.
Rules may have changed since I was in college, but I registered in the state where I attended school even though I was from a different state (i.e. my parents lived in a different state.) I don't think there was a mechanism for the Board of Elections to check whether I still considered my childhood home to be "home." I was over 18, and I lived where I lived.
It varies by state, but most states will allow you to vote in the state where you attend college. No points for guessing which states are the ones throwing up barriers to that.
I went to school out of state, but received a reciprocal scholarship that gave me cheaper tuition. In order to maintain my scholarship, I couldn't claim my college state as my residence, so I couldn't vote there. But then I got screwed over by my program and had to take a 5th year to get my degree, and my scholarship only lasted 4 years. So summer after my 4th year, I had to scramble to change my residency so I could qualify for in-state tuition. Which was a whole mess in and of itself, because my landlord never gave me a formal lease and didn't have any bills in my name at my then-address.
Most states (all the ones I've lived in) allow you to, actually. As long as you aren't voting in two states, you're good even if you're registered in both. And it's really common to be on the rolls in multiple states.
I moved from NYC in 2020 and was still getting mayoral primary texts earlier this year. I think it might have been an old list because I saw something about data taken or requested by Musk's people so I checked and I'm FINALLY off the rolls there after 5 years of not voting in NY since I, yaknow, have been voting in my new state instead. I was definitely getting NYC mayoral spam in 2021 and last year was a grab bag from volunteer orgs as to what state they were asking me to volunteer in lol.
Wonder how long my current state will keep me on the rolls in 2 years when I move. It's a swing state, so if I move to another swing state, I'll be truly inundated in 2028.
"You're good" is doing a lot of work there. The states are supposed to communicate with each other so you get taken off the rolls where you were previously registered, but it's a slow and inconsistent thing.
But as long as you don't vote in both places and you're not a public figure you probably get away with it.
You can actively unregister when you move. To, among other things, avoid some of the spam.
Never heard of unregistering to vote in New York. You can get your registration moved if you move within the state; maybe that's what you're thinking about? I helped with local campaigns and I'd regularly see people on the rolls who'd moved states several years before.
And yeah, it's not a problem. Someone looking can see that the first time I voted in my new state was after the last time I voted in the old. That's all that matters: that you aren't voting in two states at the same time. If I'd moved back, I believe i would have needed to fill out a new voter registration form to be legal and I would have needed a new driver's license anyways since my old one is voided.
A public figure would have their voter registration kept confidential in the first place so only the states/local governments would know. You do not receive confidential registrations even when your data request is for a campaign.
Registering to vote in the college town is one of the ways out-of-state students can establish residency to avoid paying out-of-state tuition at state universities.
When I was at school this was specifically not allowed. You had to live in the state for a certain period of time and then apply. Otherwise everyone would try it.
No it's not. There are specific rules about this in most states. If you're dependant (by federal dept of education rules) it's where your parents are residents. If you're independent, there are generally stipulations that include length of living there, that you're financially self supporting, and/or work a certain number of hours per week.
US law has the concepts of “domicile,” “residence,” and “citizenship.” I’ve been practicing law for 20 years, and I have only a fuzzy idea of how they fit together. Citizenship, I think I understand. I’m pretty sure “domicile” is the area where you plan to return even if you leave for a time, while “residence” is where you happen to be staying for more than a transient period and can be temporary or permanent . . . but if it mattered, I’d have to look it all up to be sure I’m using the terms correctly, because I’m not sure about the last one especially.
It’s a bit different, but mostly semantics. “Residence” is where you permanently reside and intent to return, no matter how long you are somewhere else and am pretty sure “domicile” is used interchangeably for legal, mostly jurisdictional, purposes.
Transients are marked as “no permanent residence” for legal purposes in some places.
The solution for those in a grey area is to get a private mailing address that is a physical address, not a PO Box at USPS.
It probably hinges on the legal definition of "residence" for that state. There's lots of examples of people using a "permanent" address or residence without actually spending much time there.
He doesn’t live there. He just spends 7 nights a week there.
It's like a Sovereign Citizen became a volunteer fireman.
I was going to ask why OOP can't just ask one of their friends that lives elsewhere to allow them to list their house/apartment as their legal residence, but I can see how that would then open the friend up to the same concerns with tenancy rights if OOP stops living at the firehouse. Also, in more general terms, if OOP is this big of a hardheaded asshole to everyone he knows, the likelihood of him having friends is low, to say nothing of friends good enough to let him use their home as his legal residence on documents.
Legal wording always makes it sound way deeper than it is..
Even the homeless can register to vote. He shouldn't need an exact address - he can give the closest cross street or something like that.
and to think literally all of this could have been avoided if that fire chief had stopped to think for like 5 entire seconds lmfao, what the fuckkkkkk
imagine being so much of a pisspot about someone you've already helped that you end up putting the legal crosshairs on your whole institution lmaooooo
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But he is a firefighter and does actually live at the firehouse
Does he actually live in the firehouse or does he just stay there, though? The fact that the firefighters can't use the address as their residential address makes me think that it's the latter.
Everyone lives somewhere. He doesn’t live anywhere else.
But he presumably does have another address as his residential address. Which (at least in my country) means that he legally lives there.
OOP clearly does not from their post.
Then I suppose that he's technically homeless, as he does not have the firehouse as his residential address either.
The firehouse does not allow him to live there without a permanent address. He is flouting their rule.
By flouting their rule, he resides there. Which they don’t want him to do. And they might fire/kick him out due to that. Which would result in him being homeless.
Yea. Sounds like LAOP was using their parent's address for physical address stuff, but they moved. So rather than thinking about how he can do things without using the firehouse's address, he's now drawn attention to the legal loophole he was hiding in and is about to be kicked out.
Ever heard of "home of record"? That's where a military person (or certain government employees) and their dependents "live" for legal purposes. It's not fraudulent to claim your previous address -- it's required!
Yeah, the shady thing appears to be that his landlord isn't cleared to be a landlord at that location.