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News story - Nov. 15, 2000

Suit Challenges Cheney's Wyoming Residency
Election lawsuit focuses on VP nominee's Jackson Hole home.

By Angus M. Thuermer Jr.

A Florida lawyer filed suit Monday to block the election of Dick Cheney as the next vice president, challenging Cheney's claim to be a resident of Jackson Hole.

The action by Lawrence A. Caplan of Boca Raton focuses on Amendment XII of the Constitution. That amendment says if the president and vice president are inhabitants of the same state, they can't earn that state's electoral votes.

Caplan claims Cheney is a Texas inhabitant, and that he and Bush therefore shouldn't be awarded Texas' 32 electoral votes.

Cheney was a resident of Texas until he changed his voting registration to Teton County on July 21st. He or his wife have owned a home in Teton County since 1993.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, names Cheney, Texas Gov. George W. Bush and Texas officials as defendants. In a telephone interview from his office Tuesday, Caplan said he filed his action after Republicans tried to block the hand count of ballots in some Florida counties.

"That just struck me as extremely undemocratic and something that would go on in Haiti," Caplan said. He said he researched court cases, including one argued in front of the U.S Supreme Court, in which permanent residency was strictly defined. Inhabitation requires an even stronger standard, Caplan said, a standard he claims Cheney doesn't meet.

In Texas, Cheney spokeswoman Juleanna Glover Weiss dismissed the action as frivolous. Cheney has been in Texas with Bush since he voted in Jackson Hole on Nov. 7.

"The secretary is a legally registered voter in Wyoming," Weiss said, referring to Cheney, the former Secretary of Defense under president George Bush. "Their Jackson Hole residence is their permanent home. They voted twice in Wyoming just in the last year. Assertions otherwise are specious."

Wyoming has various tests for residency requirements. To obtain a resident fishing or hunting license, for example, one must reside in the state for at least the prior year and not have claimed a residence elsewhere. Somebody who moves to Wyoming to work must register his or her vehicle and get Wyoming plates within a month. But somebody who wants to vote may have lived in the state only a minute so long as he or she can provide a street address for a residence.

Caplan said he's not a rabid Democrat.

"I'm not a political gadfly," he said. "I voted for Ronald Reagan. I listen to Rush Limbaugh. I'm a regular Democrat, a very middle-of-the-road guy."

Without referencing any Wyoming laws or regulations, Caplan makes his case based on Cheney's eight years of residency in Dallas, Texas.

"He didn't leave his house [in Texas], didn't sell his house, didn't change his driver's license," Caplan said. "Where is he now? Is he waiting for the news in his house in Wyoming? He went right back to Texas."

Caplan also said that Cheney has "availed himself of residency privileges in Texas, including provisions of the Texas Homestead Exemption Act. He said that act protects people who are sued from losing their home.

Caplan said Cheney has listed Texas as his residence for income tax purposes. The suit states that "Mr. Cheney did not move into a new primary residence ... Mr. Cheney returned to his home outside Dallas, which remained his primary residence throughout the duration of the presidential campaign."

Cheney spent at least parts of several weekends in Jackson Hole during his campaign.

In his suit, Caplan argues that Cheney, a Wyoming native who served six terms as the state's lone U.S. Representative, "dashed to Wyoming," to change his registration before accepting Bush's nomination as running mate. The move is "highly indicative of the fact that he was well aware of the requirement as set out in the Twelfth Amendment and was attempting to finesse said requirement," the suit states.

The Twelfth Amendment says state electors shall vote for president and vice president "one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves."

Caplan explains the language in his filing. "The Twelfth Amendment is clear that one of the candidates, either the candidate for president or the one for vice president, must be an inhabitant of a different state than that of any particular state's electors," he wrote. "In the case of Texas, that constitutional requirement has clearly not been complied with.

"Clearly, if the Constitution is to be followed to the letter of the law, and not circumvented by an obvious and highly cynical attempt to cleverly finesse its provisions, which were created with great forethought by our nation's 'Founding Fathers,' then George Bush and Dick Cheney cannot be allowed to receive the thirty-two electoral votes of the state of Texas," the suit states.

Caplan asks the judge to declare that Bush and Cheney were inhabitants of Texas at the time of the election and he also asked for a permanent injunction preventing the Secretary of State of the state of Texas from certifying its slate of electors in favor of the Republican ticket.

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