Control of many town boards in our region is up for grabs this November, and with it decisions on proposed zoning ordinances, preservation efforts and assessment standards. In these critical local elections, which will affect the future of your lifestyle here for decades to come, literally a handful of votes can tip the scales.
We urge all readers who own or rent a home here to register and vote in their Hudson Valley towns.
Re-registering to vote from your primary residence to your second home, whether owned or rented, is simple, entirely legal and carries virtually no risk, as a website developed by the New York Democratic Lawyers Council makes clear. Please visit the site, CountryVote.org , which has convincing and authoritative answers to any questions about voting where your second home is located. (The only case where re-registering may cause complications, according to the site, is for rent-controlled tenants in New York City who are already in violation of the program’s guidelines.)
In order to change your registration, all you need to do is fill out the attached Registration Form with your country address. If you are unable to be here on Election Day, it is easy to apply for an Absentee Ballot once you have registered.
If you are an owner or renter of a second home and you are not registered here, please fill out the form and mail it in no later than October 12!
If you are registered here, please remember to vote on November 6!
If you have friends or neighbors who are not registered here and could be, please send them a link to this site today!
Comments
Attention rent-controlled or rent-stabilized apartment dwellers in NYC, BEWARE!
From countryvote.org, under the rent control tab:
"If you have a rent-controlled or rent-stabilized apartment in New York City, registering to vote at your second home upstate is probably not a good idea.
This is the one situation we’ve been able to think of where a dual-resident who wants to vote where his vote matters more should probably think twice about it.
The landlord of a rent-controlled or rent-stabilized apartment usually has a strong economic incentive to evict existing tenants. Voter registration is one factor in determining primary residence for rent control purposes, and for an apartment to be protected under rent control and rent stabilization laws in New York City, the tenant must be using the apartment as a primary residence.
With so much at stake, voters with these kinds of apartments who also have significant and continuing attachments to a second residence upstate could be asking for trouble if they put that fact in the public record."
REPLY:
As I mentioned in my posting, the CountryVote.org website does single out rent-controlled tenants as people who should probably not register at their second home.
The issue is complex, but a public record of a second home may help landlords argue that 1) the tenant has more assets and income than the rent control guidelines allow and 2) the tenant may not have his primary residence in NYC despite spending more than six months per year living there and paying the city's income tax.
In short, rent-controlled tenants should probably not re-register to vote here.
Posted by: Curt Ostermann | August 2, 2007 06:53 PM