Chaffetz home a hurdle?

GOP congressional candidate Jason Chaffetz will not vote for himself on Election Day. He cannot. He does not live in the 3rd District, which he wants to represent next year in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The Constitution requires only that House members be inhabitants of the state where they are elected — and Chaffetz meets that criterion by residing in Alpine, about 2.5 miles away from the nearest 3rd District boundary. Alpine is in the only small strip of Utah County not in the district.

That didn't bother voters in June's primary election, when Chaffetz defeated Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, by a 60-40 margin — even as Cannon bought late ads attacking Chaffetz's nonresidency.

Still, not living in a district while seeking to represent it is historically rare. In fact, in the nation's history maybe only two members of the House clearly did not live in their districts, according to digging by the Deseret News and congressional researchers. It could be imprecise because no comprehensive academic research on that topic could be located.

Also, one additional man who lived outside his district was elected — but the House refused to seat him when it ruled he did not even live in the proper state. Questions have arisen about the real residency of many others through the years, but virtually all of them at least claimed to own property or rent an apartment in their districts.

Not Chaffetz. "It would have been a lot easier to tell people that I plan to move, but I don't," he said in an interview. "We love Alpine. We plan to be 'lifers' there. The kids love their school." And he loves his six-bedroom home built in 1998, which the county assessor values at $767,531.

"I have lived in Utah County (the heart of the 3rd District) for 20-plus years," he said. He expects redistricting in 2011 to put Alpine back into the same district as the rest of Utah County. "I think the founders designed things as they did because of potential situations like mine," where he feels he can better represent a district other than his own.

But few people have ever pulled that off, since most voters usually expect their representatives to live with them.

One of two who clearly lived outside their districts was former Rep. Parren J. Mitchell, D-Md., who served from 1971 to 1987.

He was the first black elected from Maryland. His true home district was only 20 percent black, and he chose to run in a neighboring Baltimore district that was about half black. "One of the reasons I chose this district is that I worked in it as poverty director, and I'm far closer to its problems," he told the Washington Post.