Court Opinion

ID: 9682830
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 13:18:14.289311+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:42.436842
License: Public Domain

HILL, Judge
(dissenting).
Although Section 145 of the Constitution defines a qualified voter as one who “resides” in the territory in which he undertakes to vote, our case law, as well as KRS 117.610 holds that a resident who is temporarily absent therefrom with the intent to return does not lose his residence so as to operate as a disfranchisement.
The Legislature of this Commonwealth, with forethought and wisdom, provided in Chapter 117 (Qualification, Registration and Purgation of Voters) that:
“The following rules, so far as applicable, shall be observed in determining the residence of a person offering to vote: * ⅜ * (2) A voter shall not lose his residence by absence for a temporary purpose merely; * * * ”
In 98 A.L.R.2d, Voting Residence, p. 489, it is written:
“The universal rule on acquiring a new domicil of one’s own choice has the essential elements of (1) physical and bodily presence in the new locality; (2) an intent to abandon the old domicil; and (3) a concurrent intent to adopt another domicil in the new location.”
The following is quoted from Everman v. Thomas, 303 Ky. 156, 197 S.W.2d 58, 63, which is cited in the majority opinion:
“In case of doubt as to the voter’s residence, it is resolved in favor of the permanency of residence in the precinct where he votes.”
Before looking at the facts in the present case, I copy the first sentence of a quotation in the majority opinion taken from 25 Am.Jur.2d, Elections, Section 67, p. 760, which reads as follows: “The intention to be considered is that which is manifested by the voter’s act.”
Now, to the record in the present case in an effort to ascertain Tiller’s “intention” with respect to whether his absence from the precinct in which he was registered was temporary or permanent.
Tiller testified he was registered in Black-log precinct, which is in Educational Division 2; that he “never voted anywhere else except when” he was “going to school *818at Morehead,” and he voted then by absentee ballot. He said he had “always been back there (Blacklog) on election day”; that he was temporarily away from Division 2 only to attend Morehead State College for one year, to work on construction at Morehead, for “two or three weeks” while in Columbus, and one summer when in Michigan; that he moved into an apartment at Inez and resided there for three years, which period ended the Sunday before he testified; that he didn’t regard his living in the apartment as a permanent residence; that he started constructing his home in April 1966, completed it, and moved into it just prior to giving his testimony. He stated he had never had the intention to permanently change his residence or place of registration to any place other than Division 2.
The able and impartial trial judge, free from the influence of school politics, found as a matter of fact that Tiller at all times nourished the intention of residing in Division 2 and that his journeys away therefrom were temporary in nature, and, in effect, as described by Judge Willis in Thompson v. Emmert, 242 Ky. 415, 46 S.W.2d 502, his “absence depends upon the completion of some temporary task, or upon the discharge of some duty of a temporary nature.” I do not consider the findings of the trial judge clearly or at all erroneous. CR 52.01. The majority opinion hurtles this code provision without so much as a murmur.
I can find no authority in Matney v. Elswick, 242 Ky. 183, 45 S.W.2d 1046, to support the majority opinion. The facts are entirely different. It is sufficient to quote the following from Matney:
“It is not even claimed that R. T. Elswick and his daughter were in Elkhorn City, which is some distance from subdistrict No. 41, for a temporary purpose with the intention of returning to their home in the latter district.”
Aside from the fact that the result of the majority opinion has disfranchised one-fifth of the voters of Martin County on a doubtful hypothesis, it has more far reaching consequences. There are thousands and thousands of Kentuckians “temporarily” away from their claimed places of residence where they are registered to vote under our law. They cherish the privilege of returning to their “claimed” voting places and will travel great distances to exercise the right of suffrage. In the event the purgation boards enforce .the law as announced in the majority opinion, a great number of persons temporarily away from their voting places will be disfranchised. The modern trend in this Nation of nomads is to allow man the right of suffrage wherever he may be found on election day.
I would affirm the judgment of the trial court.
STEWART, J., joins in this dissent.