CNN: Tulsi Gabbard declared her residency in Texas. Then she voted in Hawaii
CNN April 9, 2025 (excerpts)
… In March 2024, Gabbard and her husband, Abraham Williams, bought a home in the Austin suburb of Leander, Texas, according to property records.
Several months later, in June, Gabbard and Williams declared under oath before a notary public that “we are resident(s) of the State of Texas,” and their Leander home was “designated as the family homestead,” according to a public document filed in Travis County, Texas, the following month….
On the (2024) campaign trail, she echoed some of Trump’s rhetoric about election security, calling voting integrity “a serious concern and a serious issue” at one Trump campaign event in Las Vegas last fall….
But a few months later, Gabbard voted in the 2024 general election back in Hawaii….
…Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University who studies election law, said Gabbard’s vote raised “a bunch of questions.”
“If she voted in Hawaii without actually living up to Hawaii’s eligibility standard, then that’s a problem,” said Levitt, who served as a voting policy adviser in the Biden administration. “Alternatively, if she always meant to keep Hawaii as home, that could well be a problem for that Texas tax exemption.”
Hawaii law says that individuals can only have a single residence for election purposes, and defines a voter’s residence as the “place in which the person’s habitation is fixed, and to which, whenever the person is absent, the person has the intention to return.”
If a voter has more than one dwelling, there is a “presumption” that a voter’s residence is the dwelling that is “subject to the homeowner’s property tax exemption,” state voting regulations say. There is also a presumption that if a voter takes up a new dwelling in another state, that new dwelling is their residence. The regulations allow voters to present evidence that they should still be allowed to vote in Hawaii.
Lance Collins, a Hawaii lawyer who has worked on multiple cases in the state in which voters challenged an elected official’s residency, said he thought Gabbard could face a challenge to her registration or an investigation into her vote in the 2024 election.
Under Hawaii law, voters keep their residency “until you take some affirmative action to abandon it,” Collins said. “Requesting a homestead exemption in another state is strong evidence of an intention to abandon.” …
read … Tulsi Gabbard declared her residency in Texas. Then she voted in Hawaii | CNN Politics
RS: Trump Cabinet member accused of illegally voting - Raw Story
TULSI GABBARD BACKGROUND: