Your house is your place of residence, but is it also your place of residence?
Ahead of a contentious ballot measure over whether South Lake Tahoe’s largely empty vacation homes should be taxed, the El Dorado County elections office this month issued an “open letter to all voters” in the city clarifying where one can legally register register to vote in the November elections. .
In the June 6 letter, written by El Dorado Elections Director Bill O’Neill, officials said they were trying to “clarify the law” about where someone can register if they own a home in the South Lake Tahoe city limits. The letter — complete with legal citations and the state’s election code — was intended to rebuke what officials recently called “misleading information” circulating around the city.
“We have become aware of misleading information being spread to South Lake Tahoe residents about where and under what circumstances a citizen can register to vote,” O’Neill said in a statement about the letter, which was shared Friday afternoon by provincial officials.
O’Neill said officials want to do “everything we can” to get residents to vote, but where they register to vote depends on where they live.
The question is whether a home in South Lake Tahoe is a voter’s “residence” or just a “residence.”
What is the difference? Language and the law, O’Neill wrote.
“Voter registration is permitted only at the location of one’s ‘domicile,’ and not in connection with any other residence that one owns or has,” the letter said. “More specifically, while it is possible to have multiple residences, for example ‘vacation homes’ or ‘second’ homes, a person can only have one residence at a time.”
The misinformation that was circulating, according to county officials, suggested that a person’s residence in South Lake Tahoe — whether it was a weekend home or a vacation rental — gave them the opportunity to register to vote. The implication was that anyone who owned property in the city could transfer registration from where they usually lived to South Lake Tahoe, allowing them to vote on the ballot measure. If approved, the initiative would tax homeowners $6,000 a year for each property left vacant for more than six months.
The letter “contains information based on case law,” according to the province. They cited People v. Superior Court, a 2011 case in Los Angeles that examined whether former state Sen. Roderick Wright — later convicted of perjury and voter fraud — could be charged with violating election law. Wright was found guilty in 2014 of voting at a place he didn’t live in, an Inglewood apartment complex he owned, and lying about it while representing L.A.’s Southern District.
“A ‘domicile’ is defined as a permanent place of residence in which the person ‘intends to remain,’ or, if absent, has the ‘intent to return,’” county officials said, citing the Wright case, citing elections. code. The quote continues: “On the other hand, a person’s domicile is that place where the person’s residence is fixed for a certain period of time, but where he or she has no intention of remaining.” “At any given time, a person may have more than one home.”
O’Neill attempted to simplify the distinction in his letter, citing an explanation from the El Dorado County District Attorney’s Office offered to Fallen Leaf Lake residents during a similar matter in 2011: “A vacation (or ‘second’) house is a dwelling, usually not a place of residence.”
“Courts have traditionally taken into account factors that may indicate residence, such as where one works, enrolls children in school, receives mail, visits their GP, where their vehicles are registered, the address on a driver’s license, where you claim the exemption from your homeowner receives or handles other matters of a similar nature,” the Public Prosecution Service said at the time.
In other words, county officials say, anyone can have multiple homes; only one home can be considered a person’s place of residence, the house where he or she lives most of the time.
“It is therefore illegal for a resident to register to vote using an address that is a place of residence rather than their place of residence, which is at the heart of the misinformation we have become aware of,” O’Neill said in Friday’s statement.
Although never stated in the letter or press release, El Dorado County officials are trying to curb anger surrounding the “South Lake Tahoe Vacancy Tax,” a measure that came up for the ballot last month and has since divided the city.
The measure — which attracted 2,500 signatures as of Nov. 5 — has divided the city over whether to ultimately impose an annual $6,000 tax on homes that sit vacant for more than six months of the year.
Resident advocates, including many renters, say the initiative would give property owners a reason to rent out vacant homes, addressing the area’s affordable housing crisis. As the Los Angeles Times noted, roughly 40% of the city’s homes are used as vacation homes or rentals, according to the U.S. Census Bureau and city figures.
Homeowners, as well as businesses and real estate interests, say a tax would not alleviate the housing shortage or force the city to build more housing, and would be a form of taxation without representation for second-home owners.
The campaigns for and against the measure have become so controversial, according to Politico, that a rally for supporters at the American Legion Hall late last month was canceled after the hosts were inundated with angry calls.
The county and its letter to voters sidestepped the controversy and encouraged residents to register while seeking to “clear any confusion regarding eligibility to vote in elections in the city of South Lake Tahoe.”
