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Note from The Tennessee Conservative: Editorial statements in this column are the sole opinion of the author; they do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the staff of this publication.
Submitted by Kathy Harms (Tennessee Fair Elections) –
When Tennessee enacted a law allowing certain overseas citizens who have never lived in our state to vote here based solely on a parent’s prior residence, it crossed a constitutional line. The anecdotes used to justify it – 18-year-olds abroad, missionary families, children of military professionals – may tug at the heart, but they do not change the legal reality: under both federal law and our own Constitution, voting follows residency and domicile, not lineage, sentiment, or where someone wishes they lived.
This was not a glitch that slipped by unnoticed. Once the loophole was discovered, two conscientious lawmakers filed legislation to bring Tennessee back into line with UOCAVA and with our own constitutional residency requirement. Rather than welcoming a good faith effort to correct an obvious problem, some in the Legislature met it with open hostility and blocked the fix in a Senate committee – protecting never resident voting over the objections of the very Tennesseans whose votes are being diluted.
At the federal level, the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) sets a clear standard. An eligible overseas voter’s address is defined as the last place in the United States where that voter was domiciled before going overseas, preserving an actual, historical connection between the voter and a community instead of creating a floating right to pick any state where a parent once lived. Congress could have written UOCAVA to follow a parent’s old address for citizens who have never lived in the United States; instead, it grounded eligibility in the voter’s own domicile.
Tennessee’s Constitution and statutes mirror that principle. Our law requires that a voter be a resident of the state and county where they vote; residency is not a technicality, it is the legal expression of a person’s real connection to a community – its schools, its roads, its courts, and its tax base. “One person, one vote,” has always meant one
resident, one vote in the community where that person actually lives, or at least has lived, not one person, one vote wherever they happen to feel most politically at home this year.
By allowing individuals who have never lived in Tennessee to cast ballots here based solely on a parent’s former address, the Legislature has created two classes of voters. One class is the people who live, work, and pay taxes in a Tennessee county and must satisfy the residency requirement to vote; the other is a never resident overseas citizen who may vote in that same county’s elections without any residential connection at all. In a culture where “identity” is increasingly treated as more important than reality, Tennessee has eƯectively said that identifying with a parent’s old ZIP code can outweigh the day-to-day stake of the neighbors who fund and depend on local government.
That dual standard raises serious equal protection concerns and dilutes the voices of bona fide residents whose daily lives are directly shaped by the oƯices on their ballots. It also sends a corrosive message: if you carry the tax burden, comply with local ordinances, and send your kids to the local schools, your vote is worth no more than that of someone who has never spent a single day as your fellow resident but claims a paper connection through a parent’s long ago address.
Nor is this just a theoretical worry. In North Carolina, litigation over “never resident” overseas voters – citizens voting solely based on a parent’s past residence – has already forced courts and election oƯicials to confront whether their constitution’s residency requirement permits such ballots in state elections. In that fight, oƯicials acknowledged that votes from never resident overseas voters had to be excluded from at least one high profile statewide race precisely because those voters lacked the required residency connection, a warning Tennessee lawmakers knew about and chose to ignore.
Other states’ experiences show that this is a legal minefield. Where states have extended voting rights to citizens who have never resided in the state, challenges are mounting over conflicts with state residency clauses and UOCAVA’s domicile language, and even states that pride themselves on accommodating overseas voters have faced federal enforcement actions over UOCAVA compliance. Tennessee is not blazing a trail; it is repeating known mistakes, with full notice of the likely consequences for both our election integrity and our taxpayers.
There is also a straightforward question of fairness. When never resident overseas voters help choose local school board members, sheriƯs, county commissioners, and judges, they are making decisions about services funded by taxes they do not pay in communities where they have never lived and may never set foot. The message to Tennessee residents is unmistakable: you shoulder the burdens of local government, but you are required to share your ballot box with people whose only tie to your county is a parent’s former mailing address — no matter how long ago that parent left and no matter how strongly those voters “identify” as Tennesseans from afar.
Members of both the Senate and the House should repeal this never resident loophole and restore a single, constitutional standard of residency for every Tennessee voter. Doing so would bring our law back into alignment with UOCAVA, honor the residency requirements in our Constitution, and protect the integrity of local self-government across this state. Residency still matters, and it cannot be reduced to a feeling or a family story; it is time for Tennessee’s lawmakers to act like it.
