That’s what Fred Karger claims. The fringe Republican presidential candidate filed a complaint with the Massachusetts elections board alleging that when Romney voted in the state in recent years, he was actually living elsewhere. Romney bought a home in La Jolla, California, in 2008 and sold his Massachusetts home the following year, whereupon he registered his voting address as the basement of his son Tagg’s house.
If Romney was actually living in his son’s basement, that’s a whole other can of worms, but he was seen often enough at political events in California that there were rumors he might run for office there, Mother Jones recounts. Karger (who is openly gay and has long disliked Romney for his stances on gay-rights issues) tracked down a fishmonger in Romney’s hometown who told him, “They flew the coop.” (Did the Romneys leave town because it was a confusing mix of Dickensian London and L.A. noir?)
Next, in 2009, the National Journal reported that the Romneys had moved to New Hampshire. But in summer 2010, they settled back in Belmont, Massachusetts, with the purchase of a new townhouse (on the grounds of a mental hospital, Mother Jones can’t resist highlighting). Romney has dealt with residency problems before: When he entered the Massachusetts governor’s election in 2002, he first had to deal with an eligibility headache and pay a bunch of back taxes. He’d been a legal resident of Utah for the three previous years, heading up the Salt Lake City Olympics.
If Karger’s voter-fraud charges are correct, the penalty is steep, with potential jail time of up to five years, but the more likely scenario is that the Romney campaign would bear the brunt of the consequences. The charges also raise a crucial question: Is America ready for its first gypsy president?
Did Mitt Romney Commit Voter Fraud? [Mother Jones]
