Court Opinion

ID: 9751910
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 17:17:12.915544+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:01.674229
License: Public Domain

Weintraub, C. J.,
concurring. I agree with the result but I would rest it on a broader base. I believe that residence in fact for the prescribed period is all that may be required, no matter what may be the individual’s attachments elsewhere, past, present, or prospective.
The concept of domicil is not constant. It is designed to assure fairness to the individual or the State or both in a given setting. Its ingredients therefore will vary, depending upon what is just and useful in a given context.
Here the subject is voting. Basic is the thought that a citizen is entitled to vote to further his political interests as he sees them. Everyone has a political interest everywhere he resides. It is the protection of that interest which the concept of domicil must reflect if it is to be other than arbitrary.
A man who resides in more than one place has more than one set of such interests. The right to vote being his, he, and he alone, can decide which interests are more important to him, and that decision should be final unless the State can demonstrate some public need to say some interests of his shall predominate over others. I do not know how the State could make that evaluation in our complex society. Nor can I find a need to impose a State-made decision upon any voter or group of voters. The State does have a proper concern to prevent multiple voting, for no voter is entitled to be counted twice in any election. To that end the State may require the individual to choose between or among his residences and make it an offense to vote at more than one place.1 *350And it would be reasonable to bar voting by “floaters” who obtain a residence for the sole purpose, of voting in a local election. But realistically that risk is remote, since voting in one place would bar voting elsewhere. In any event the State would be hard put to prove such a motivation. Except for that academic situation, I see no basis for the State to deny a man the right to vote where he resides or to decide for any voter that he ought to vote from one abode rather than another.
Eor this reason, a student, and a nonstudent as well, who satisfies the durational residence requirement, may vote where he resides, without regard to the duration of his anticipated stay or the existence of. another residence elsewhere. It is for him alone to say whether his voting interests at the residence he selects exceed his voting interests elsewhere.2
Weintraub, C. J., concurs in result.
For affirmance — Chief Justice Weintraub and Justices Jacobs, Francis, Proctor, Hall, Schettino and Mountain.-7.
For reversal — None.

 Abstractly an individual could say he should be permitted to vote on local issues in each political community in which he has a residence, so long as he does not thereby obtain a second voice upon *350any public issue. But the practical problems involved in attempting to regulate or supervise such dual voting are probably prohibitive and hence it is reasonable to limit voting to one residence for all purposes.

 N. J. S. A. 19:4-4.1 permits a voter with multiple residences in this State to establish which is his voting residence. The statute, however, does not confer a right to choose; it appears to contemplate that the validity of the choice will be governed by criteria to be gathered elsewhere.