Essex, Massachusetts, at low tide. (Photo courtesy of Cliff Ageloff) |
Letter: Essex needs to clean up Conomo voting policies
To the editor:
Ever since New England's first summer visitors established vacation getaways such as Conomo Point in small coastal towns, there has been tension over town policies between those who relocate for part of the year and those who reside permanently.
Many coastal communities have accommodated summer residents' concerns about town affairs through non-resident taxpayer associations. Throughout Cape Cod, for example, several towns have mechanisms to allow non-resident taxpayers a participatory role in local government since there is a tacit understanding that non-residents don't vote.
These mechanisms give seasonal residents a voice, not a vote. All acknowledge that summer folks indeed live and vote elsewhere.
Essex is embarrassingly distinguished, however, from
all other coastal communities in that summer residents get to vote. In
all other communities with seasonal populations — whether they lease,
rent or own property — it's made uniformly clear by local registrars, as
in neighboring Ipswich and Rockport, that summer people do not meet the
legal definition of resident and therefore do not qualify as voters.
Residency standards found in the street listing and
voter registration laws protect our parochial interests; it is how we
guard ourselves from purely selfish, self-serving outsiders.
In other communities, electoral integrity is guarded vigorously to keep the rolls clean of unqualified voters — unqualified, that is, just like President Grover Cleveland of Princeton, N.J.
Retired history professor Jim Coogan tells a story of
even the most privileged and powerful being unable to vote in their
vacation homes' host community.
In 1890, when President Cleveland purchased his
waterfront home Gray Gables on Buzzards Bay in Bourne, he was welcomed
by his year-round neighbors. But when Cleveland complained to selectmen
about what he called "the nuisance of dirty, foul-mouthed, shouting men"
digging clams, he got little sympathy from the town fathers. The
president wrote to a friend that it seemed there was "in some quarters
of the town of Bourne, a disposition to drive us out of the community."
Because Cleveland was a legal resident of Princeton,
N.J., he couldn't vote in Bourne — nor was he allowed, even as president
of the United States, to speak at Town Meeting. He was, in his own
words, "a pretty large and uncomplaining taxpayer."
Grover Cleveland wasn't a big fan of quahoggers. |
Every place but here, sadly, it's no mystery where
people can legally vote. We vote where we live, not where we summer.
It's the place we typically pay our bills from, where we have our home
offices, and it's often where we celebrate Christmas.
In Essex, Conomo Point tenants have been allowed to
falsely claim residency even though they can't be "at home" here. Their
leases prohibit winter occupancy when there is no water service. Quite
simply: Nobody's home because they indeed live somewhere else.
The rampant abuses of voter fraud based on false
residency claims are being formally challenged now. No one is allowed to vote in two states, but some seasonal voters
appear to be registered in New Jersey, California, Michigan and Florida.
Falsely claiming residency for voting carries criminal penalties of up
to $10,000 or five years in prison or both.
Can you already hear the cries of "no taxation without representation"?
If one has three or four residences, does that mean one
can vote wherever one happens to pay taxes? Of course not. Clearly,
Essex owes fairness, courtesy, and respect to summer cottage
vacationers. But that should be as far as it goes.
Grover Cleveland's ghost is spooking many in town
because our irregular voter registration practices are indeed quite
scary. As a result, Essex's uniquely convoluted residency policies have
compromised the integrity of our electoral process.
In Essex, more than 100 over-privileged, unqualified
voters are unjustly bestowed special rights unworthy of even a commander
in chief. Essex is entitled to clean elections through the diligent
enforcement of residency rules.
It would be proper to honor Grover Cleveland's spirit
and the rest of us mere mortals who truly live in Essex: Make Essex a
place where only legal residents can cast their vote.
CLIFF AGELOFF
Essex