🚀 go-pugleaf

In ne.general Charles M. Kozierok <ixlu@pcguide.com> wrote:
> The wording for the P and VP is identical: "inhabitant".

Jurist, a legal education site, invited two law professors to have a 
public discussion of the issues in this election at 
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/election/electiondial.htm

Professor Peter M. Shane of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law 
made an interesting point in regards to this issue:

 Inhabitancy. I assume one can be the legal inhabitant of more than one 
 state because I have friends who spend the week in their Manhattan 
 apartment and weekends at their Connecticut home, pay taxes to both 
 states, and whose children, I am confident, will someday qualify for 
 in-state tuition at both SUNY and the University of Connecticut. I had 
 thought phenomena of this sort are so common that multiple residency was 
 just a well-known fact of life.  

 With regard to the Senate (and there is parallel language regarding the 
 House), clause 3 of Article I, sec. 3, provides: "No Person shall be a 
 Senator . . . who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State 
 for which he shall be chosen." I called this an "additive rule" because it 
 does not require that a Senatorial candidate abandon any other habitation. 
 It does not read: ""No Person shall be a Senator . . . who, when elected, 
 is an Inhabitant of any State other than the State for which he shall be 
 chosen." Yet, this latter hypothetical formulation echoes precisely the 
 structure of the Twelfth Amendment: "The Electors shall . . . vote by 
 ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not 
 be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves." This is plainly a 
 rule of exclusion.
...
 I remain agnostic about taking this issue to court. But I do think the 
 issue deserves the conscientious attention of Texas electors and of the 
 House of Representatives, if need be. What little discussion of the 
 inhabitation point I can find in the Philadelphia debates indicates an 
 anxiety among small state delegates that electors from large states would 
 favor solely their own, with the result that only the interests and values 
 of the larger states might be represented in the top offices of the 
 national executive. Virginians might vote only for their own tobacco 
 farmers. Someday, Texans might vote for two Texas oilmen. Of course, if 
 you are correct that the kinds of ties Cheney maintains with Texas are 
 insufficient to render him an inhabitant as that word would customarily be 
 understood, then the point is moot.

Just food for thought...
-- 
     ----------> Elisabeth Anne Riba * lis@osmond-riba.org <----------
     "[She] is one of the secret masters of the world: a librarian.  
      They control information. Don't ever piss one off."
                                        - Spider Robinson, "Callahan Touch"