Should expatriate citizens of your country have the right to vote?
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@evan As a Brazilian citizen, it’s mandatory for me to vote for president every 4 years even though I don’t live there.
I lose the right to renew my passport if I don’t. Brazil sees voting as a responsibility not a right - you can go to the polls and void your ballot but you have to show up.
I have opinions on the subject after voting as a Canadian citizen for many years.
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@evan yes, but folks like yourself should have a special representative in the House and Senate rather than voting wherever you last were resident.
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@evan yes, but folks like yourself should have a special representative in the House and Senate rather than voting wherever you last were resident.
@evan @stinerman
Yes. It should be done as in France: there are at present eleven deputies who represent French citizens abroad.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_legislative_constituencies_for_citizens_abroad
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@evan if you for example retire in Sweden and want to spend the rest of your days in another country, you will live of your pension money from Sweden. How much money you get (how much is taken from you in taxes etc) is decided by whom is running the country. So yes they should be able to vote because there’s things that directly concerns them
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@evan As a Brazilian citizen, it’s mandatory for me to vote for president every 4 years even though I don’t live there.
I lose the right to renew my passport if I don’t. Brazil sees voting as a responsibility not a right - you can go to the polls and void your ballot but you have to show up.
I have opinions on the subject after voting as a Canadian citizen for many years.
@renata
Would you lose your Brazilian citizenship by not voting in Brazilian elections, or just the passport? -
@evan I would say no.
My rationale: Who am I as a resident and citizen of another country to decide what the residents of my other citizenship country wish/want. I don’t pay taxes there, I don’t participate in their active life, etc. For all intents and purposes, they are foreigners
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@mpjgregoire @evan Just the passport, you have to pay a fine and if you don’t you can’t do a bunch of things - makes your life annoying.
My father passed and I had skipped one election, I had to regularize my electoral status at the consulate to be able to get a lawyer in Brazil and get the estate stuff going.
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@evan Americans are required to pay taxes to the US when we work abroad, though we're certainly not consistent on "no taxation without representation"
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@evan no taxation without representation
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@evan Yes, but not on local elections if you've been away for a long time. Another but: That there's some balance between the voting rights of expatriate citizens and people living in my country without citizenship (many of whom currently can't vote, but have lived here longer than some expatriate citizens and have a higher stake in what happens to the country).
