Walters v. Weed

• Decision Date: 28 April 1988
• Docket Number: S.F. 25130
• Citation: 246 Cal.Rptr. 5,752 P.2d 443,45 Cal.3d 1
• Court: California Supreme Court
• Parties: , 752 P.2d 443, 45 Ed. Law Rep. 1147 Norman A. WALTERS et al., Plaintiffs and Appellants, v. Jane WEED et al., Defendants and Appellants.

Page 5

246 Cal.Rptr. 5

45 Cal.3d 1, 752 P.2d 443, 45 Ed. Law Rep. 1147

Norman A. WALTERS et al., Plaintiffs and Appellants, v. Jane WEED et al., Defendants and Appellants.

S.F. 25130.

Supreme Court of California In Bank.

April 28, 1988.

Rehearing Denied June 23, 1988.

John K. Van de Kamp, Atty. Gen., Andrea Sheridan Ordin, Chief Asst. Atty. Gen., Marian M. Johnston and Manuel M. Medeiros, Deputy Atty. Gen., as amici curiae on behalf of plaintiffs and appellants.

Gary M. Cohen, John W. Keker, Keker & Brockett, San Francisco, Mitchell Page, Page & Coben and Robert E. Taren, Santa Cruz, for defendants and appellants.

Ronald A. Lumbrun, Anthony T. Caso, Jonathan M. Coupal, John H. Findley, Sacramento, Timothy J. Morgan, and Liberty, Morgan & Glidden, Santa Cruz, for plaintiffs and appellants.

PANELLI, Justice.

This case presents the question whether voters who leave their domiciles with no intention of returning to live there lose their right to vote in their former domiciles even though they have not yet established new domiciles. In light of the principle that everyone must have a domicile somewhere, we conclude that such individuals retain their right to vote in the precincts of their former domiciles. ¹

FACTS

On November 8, 1983, Jane Weed and three other candidates were elected to the Santa Cruz City Council. Ms. Weed received the fewest number of votes of the four declared winners. Based on a Santa Cruz County Grand Jury report that found voting irregularities in the four on-campus precincts at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz), plaintiffs, a group of individual citizens, contested Weed's election. They alleged that 472 of the persons who voted in the on-campus precincts were not domiciled in the precincts in which they voted and thus cast illegal votes. Plaintiffs filed a statement of contest of election, seeking a declaration that candidate Bill Fieberling, who lost to Weed by 145 votes, be declared the rightful winner.

At the time of the election in 1983 the 472 voters in question were students at UC Santa Cruz. They had lived and registered to vote on the university campus. When they returned to school in the autumn of 1983, many were unable or chose not to live on campus. However, by the time voter registration closed, not all of these students had obtained off-campus housing where they intended to remain. As a result, they voted in their former campus precincts. The question therefore presented is whether these students lost their right to vote on campus during the period between the date on which they abandoned their campus domiciles with no intention of returning there to live and the date on which they established new domiciles. For the reasons set forth below, we hold that these students did not vote illegally. We therefore uphold the election results.

PROCEDURES BELOW

This case involved a lengthy trial, at which 292 voters testified. To avoid the intrusive, time-consuming process of requiring the students to disclose the tenor of their votes (Evid.Code, § 1050), the trial court approved the parties' stipulation to the use of a formula which permitted the court to find that for every ten illegal votes found within the four on-campus precincts, nine were to be counted for Weed and one for Fieberling. The nine-to-one formula was based on the trial court's taking judicial notice of the political profile of UC Santa Cruz students: "[A] candidate or issue that appeals to the left side of the spectrum and prevails or fails narrowly in Santa Cruz as a whole carries the campus by 88 to 96 percent of the votes cast...." ² The use of this type of formula has been approved in prior decisions (see, e.g., Singletary v. Kelley (1966) 242 Cal.App.2d 611, 51 Cal.Rptr. 682) and is not at issue here. By a computation similarly not at issue, the trial court determined that under the nine-to-one formula, one hundred eighty-two illegal votes citywide were necessary to set aside the election results, as permitted by section 20024 of the Elections Code, ³ and declare Fieberling the winner.

The court found that 193 voters who testified did not physically reside in the on-campus precincts in which they voted and "unequivocally" expressed at trial the intention not to return to live on campus. Of these 193 voters, the trial court found that only 113 had acquired a new domicile as of 1 month before the election and had therefore voted illegally. ⁴ As to the remaining 80 voters, the trial court affirmed the legality of their votes based on the principle, codified in section 244 of the Government Code, that one cannot lose a domicile until a new one is acquired. The trial court found that only 113, rather than the necessary 182, votes had been cast illegally and confirmed Weed's election.

The Court of Appeal reversed, 231 Cal.Rptr. 615, declaring Fieberling the winner in place of Weed. The Court of Appeal hinged its analysis on section 200, subdivision (b) of the Elections Code which provides that one's domicile for voting purposes is "that place in which his or her habitation is fixed, wherein the person has the intention of remaining, and to which, whenever he or she is absent, the person has the intention of returning...." Thus, the court held that, as a matter of law, the 193 persons who moved from their campus domiciles without the intention of returning there to live lost the right to vote in those precincts, regardless of whether they had established new domiciles. ⁵ The effect of the court's decision was to disenfranchise those voters who abandoned a former domicile without having established a new one. We granted Weed's petition for review to reconcile the apparent conflict between the Government Code provisions relied on by the trial court and the Elections Code provisions relied on by the Court of Appeal.

DISCUSSION

A. Elections Code Section 200.

The California Constitution provides that "[a] United States citizen 18 years of age and resident in this state may vote" and directs the Legislature to "define resident and provide for registration and free elections." (Cal. Const., art. II, §§ 2, 3.) To comply with this constitutional mandate, the Legislature enacted sections 200-217 of the Elections Code, setting forth the criteria to determine one's residence for voting purposes.

Section 200 of the Elections Code provides: "(a) Except as provided in this article, the term 'residence' as used in this code for voting purposes means a person's domicile. [p] (b) The domicile of a person is that place in which his or her habitation is fixed, wherein the person has the intention of remaining, and to which, whenever he or she is absent, the person has the intention of returning. At a given time, a person may only have one domicile. [p] (c) The residence of a person, as used in this article, is that place in which the person's habitation is fixed for some period of time, but wherein he or she does not have the intention of remaining. At a given time, a person may have more than one residence." (Emphasis added.)

Plaintiffs contend that the definition of domicile set forth in section 200, subdivision (b) demonstrates that the Court of Appeal was correct in invalidating the 193 votes cast by students who voted on campus after having relocated with no intention to return to campus to live. Indeed, as aptly stated by the trial court, "If section 200 were the only statute on point, this case would be very easy to decide. The overwhelming majority of voters, far more than necessary to overturn the election, testified unequivocally that when they moved [off campus], they had formed the clear resolve not to return to the campus to live. Those students could not have more clearly renounced the ambit of section 200[, subdivision] (b)." The trial court correctly recognized, however, that section 200 of the Elections Code is not the only statute to be considered; sections 202, subdivision (b) and 205 of the Elections Code and sections 243 and 244 of the Government Code must also be taken into account.

B. Elections Code Sections 202, Subdivision (b) and 205; Government Code Sections 243 and 244.

Section 202, subdivision (b) of the Elections Code provides: "A person does not gain a domicile in any precinct into which he or she comes for temporary purposes merely, without the intention of making that precinct his or her home." Section 205 of the Elections Code provides: "The mere intention to acquire a new domicile, without the fact of removal avails nothing, neither does the fact of removal without the intention." Additionally, sections 243 and 244 of the Government Code set forth rules for determining one's "domicile"--a term referred to in those sections alternately as one's "legal residence" or "residence." Section 243 of the Government Code provides: "Every person has, in law, a residence." Section 244 establishes: "In determining the place of residence, the following rules shall be observed: ... [p] (b) There can only be one residence. [p] (c) A residence cannot be lost until another is gained.... [p] (f) The residence can be changed only by the union of act and intent." We have recognized that these Government Code sections which use the term "residence" actually mean "legal residence" or "domicile," and we have interpreted them accordingly. (Smith v. Smith (1955) 45 Cal.2d 235, 239, 288 P.2d 497; accord Fenton v. Board of Directors (1984) 156 Cal.App.3d 1107, 1113-1114, 203 Cal.Rptr. 388.)

Sections 202, subdivision (b) and 205 of the Elections Code and sections 243 and 244 of the Government Code rest on the well established principle that every person has in law a domicile or, as stated in the vernacular by the trial court, "everybody belongs somewhere." To insure that everyone has a domicile at any given time, the statutes adopt the rule that a domicile is not lost until a new one is acquired. These fundamental principles are supported by a long and diverse line of authority....