Oregon is fairly relaxed about who is a resident for purposes of voting in local elections. Just how relaxed? Take a look at the chapter in the Oregon Revised Statutes on how to determine residence for voting purposes.

Basically it says that your residence is where you live and where, if you are absent, you intend to return. And if you leave home and go to another state without actually establishing a residence there, you don’t lose your right to vote in Oregon.

You might have sold your Oregon house 10 years ago and toured the country and sunny Mexico since then in your motor home, but you’re still entitled to vote on issues in your former home town and district, including whether to raise taxes.

This might not be a big deal, except that sometimes tax elections hinge on a handful or even fewer votes. And then it would be nice to know that the deciding votes had not been cast by someone enjoying the weather thousands of miles away without any interest or stake in his old home town.

The law is just as vague in regard to the homeless. The law says the residence address of a homeless person “shall be any place within the county describing the physical location of the person.” And the mailing address may be the office of the county clerk.

The Linn County Clerk’s Office says it has no homeless persons using its address for the purpose of getting ballots. But now is not always, and who knows how this might change in the years to come.

This comes up because some people professing to be worried about the integrity of the election process last week raised a few complaints about the statewide voter registration database. Among other things they noticed that lots of people used the same addresses as registered voters. Many of those were homeless, and some were perpetual travelers without a home base who are still registered as Oregon voters.

With a population that is constantly in flux, it may be impossible to tightly nail down voter residency requirements without interfering with the right to vote. Still, it would be reassuring if, especially in elections on local issues, the only voters eligible were those with a tangible stake in the outcome of the vote. (hh)