[4]*4Opinion
PANELLI, J.
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
[5]*5the 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.
[6]*6The Court of Appeal reversed, 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, [fl] (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. [fl] (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.” (Italics added.)
Plaintiffs contend that the definition of domicile set forth in section 200, subdivision (b) demonstrates that the Court of Appeal was correct in [7]*7invalidating 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:. . . [fl] (b) There can only be one residence, [ft] (c) A residence cannot be lost until another is gained. . . . [fl] (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. (See, e.g., Mitchell v. U.S. (1875) 88 U.S. (21 Wall) 350, 353 [22 L.Ed. 584, 588]; Sampsell [8]*8v. Superior Court (1948) 32 Cal.2d 763, 774 [197 P.2d 739]; Smith v. Smith (1955) 45 Cal.2d 235, 239 [288 P.2d 497]; Estate of Glassford (1952) 114 Cal.App.2d 181, 186 [249 P.2d 908, 34 A.L.R.2d 1259]; Chapman v. Superior Court (1958) 162 Cal.App.2d 421, 426-427 [328 P.2d 23]; In re Leff (1972) 25 Cal.App.3d 630, 642 [102 Cal.Rptr. 195]; Rest.2d Conf. of Laws, § 19; 1 Beale, A Treatise on the Conflict of Laws (1935) ch. 2, pp. 181-182.)
The few California decisions that have addressed the specific question of what constitutes one’s domicile for voting purposes have affirmed the fundamental principles set forth above. (Huston v. Anderson (1904) 145 Cal. 320, 328-329 [78 P. 626]; People v. English (1921) 54 Cal.App. 90 [201 P. 145]; see also Collier v. Menzel (1985) 176 Cal.App.3d 24 [221 Cal.Rptr. 110].)
C. The Gap in the Statutory Scheme.
Given the principle that everyone must have a domicile somewhere, a gap appears to exist in the statutory scheme. On the one hand, section 200, subdivision (b) declares that in order to establish one’s domicile, one must have a fixed habitation, the intent to remain and, when absent, the intent to return. On the other hand, the remaining statutes in the scheme comprise a legislative mandate that everyone be domiciled somewhere and that the act of leaving one’s domicile without the act and intention of establishing a new one does not extinguish the old. “These statutes,” the trial court cogently observed, “do not mesh.”
The trial court posed a simple hypothetical to illustrate the gap in the statutory scheme: “What of a person who has departed a residence with the unequivocally expressed intention not to return but who views his new abode as a temporary stopping place and does not intend it to be his domicile?” Under section 200, subdivision (b), the person is arguably left without a domicile, no longer entitled to vote in the precinct of the abandoned residence. Under sections 202, subdivision (b) and 205 of the Elections Code and sections 243 and 244 of the Government Code, the person retains the abandoned residence as his or her domicile for voting purposes until such time as a new one is acquired. The hypothetical is not an idle one but rather, according to the trial court, applies to the particular situation described by “many, if not most” of the witnesses in this case.
D. Reconciliation.
Confronted with statutes that appear to be at odds with each other, as illustrated by the hypothetical, the trial court endeavored to reconcile the statutes by gleaning from them the following rule: “Even if a voter has left his residence with the intention not to return to it, that residence remains [9]*9his domicile as long as he has not acquired a new one.” The trial court’s rule, in our view, properly harmonizes the relevant statutes and merits our adoption.
In examining statutes that appear to conflict, we are guided by settled rules of statutory construction. The most fundamental of these rules is that the court should ascertain the intent of the Legislature so as to effectuate the purpose of the law. (Brown v. Superior Court (1984) 37 Cal.3d 477, 484 [208 Cal.Rptr. 724, 691 P.2d 272].) Statutes that are apparently in conflict should, if reasonably possible, be reconciled (Associated Home Builders etc., Inc. v. City of Livermore (1976) 18 Cal.3d 582, 596 [135 Cal.Rptr. 41, 557 P.2d 473, 92 A.L.R.3d 1038]), even when the court interprets provisions in different codes (Building Material & Construction Teamsters’ Union v. Farrell (1986) 41 Cal.3d 651, 665 [224 Cal.Rptr. 688, 715 P.2d 648]).
Sections 200-217 of the Elections Code represent the Legislature’s response to numerous allegations of election fraud in the local elections held in San Francisco and San Bernardino in 1975. (Bolinger, Cal. Elec. Law During the Sixties and Seventies: Liberalization and Centralization, 28C West’s Ann. Elec. Codes (1977 ed.) pp. 55, 83-86.) The allegations were based on reports that many city residents had moved to outlying areas with the intent to remain in the suburbs, but had returned to vote in their former city precincts. Among those who had migrated to the suburbs were a number of city employees of San Francisco “believed to be more than enough to determine the outcome of many elections, including measures involving pensions of city employees.” (Id. at p. 84.)
Shortly after these allegations were published, Senate Bill No. 1653 was introduced, part of the four-bill package which was ultimately chaptered as sections 200-217 of the Elections Code. (Sen. Bill No. 1653 (1975-1976 Reg. Sess.).) In testifying before the Senate Committee on Elections and Reapportionment as to the purpose of Senate Bill No. 1653, the bill’s author stated: “I’m sure you recognize the fact that a person can have more than one residence but a person cannot have more than one domicile and so [Senate Bill No. 1653] seeks to arrive at that particular point. . . . [The bill attempts] to set forth ... in statutory form for the first time some of the court decisions on the question of domicile and residence . . . [so] the Clerks and the voters will know where people should vote. . . . [Senate Bill No. 1653] also defines what’s meant by domicile and residence; a question of act and intent required to establish a domicile. . . .” (Transcript of Hg. on Voter Residency and Registration before Sen. Com. on Elec, and Reapportionment (Mar. 5, 1976) pp. 6-13.)
[10]*10Plaintiffs argue that the legislative intent underlying sections 200-217 of the Elections Code was to prevent voters from casting ballots in the precincts of their abandoned domiciles. Plaintiffs are only partially correct. It is clear from the circumstances surrounding the adoption of sections 200-217, and from the statements made by the author of the bill, that the Legislature sought to prevent people who had in fact acquired new domiciles from voting in the precincts of their abandoned domiciles.
Although there is a marked judicial reticence to rely on statements made by individual members of the Legislature as an expression of the intent of the entire body (Friends of Mammoth v. Board of Supervisors (1972) 8 Cal.3d 247, 258 [104 Cal.Rptr. 761, 502 P.2d 1049]), the Senate committee hearing transcript, incorporating the author’s testimony, commands respect for two reasons. First, we have in the past accepted an individual legislator’s statement as an aid to ascertaining a statute’s underlying purpose when the statement has given some indication of the arguments made to the Legislature and was subsequently printed by the Legislature. (California Teachers Assn. v. San Diego Community College Dist. (1981) 28 Cal.3d 692, 700 [170 Cal.Rptr. 817, 621 P.2d 856].) Second, the transcript reveals the discussion and events at the hearing, aspects which we may properly consider. (In re Marriage of Bouquet (1976) 16 Cal.3d 583, 590 [128 Cal.Rptr. 427, 546 P.2d 1371]; Rich v. State Board of Optometry (1965) 235 Cal.App.2d 591, 603 [45 Cal.Rptr. 512].) That discussion, which comprised a full day’s testimony, indicates that other legislators and witnesses shared the author’s views on both the need for, and the purpose of, Senate Bill No. 1653.
We have recognized that a wide variety of factors may illuminate the legislative design, “ ‘such as context, the object in view, the evils to be remedied, the history of the time and of legislation upon the same subject, public policy and contemporaneous construction.’ ” (In re Marriage of Bouquet, supra, 16 Cal.3d 583, 587, quoting Alford v. Pierno (1972) 27 Cal.App.3d 682, 688 [104 Cal.Rptr. 110].) The election fraud alleged in connection with the 1975 elections, and the references to that fraud during the consideration of Senate Bill No. 1653, suggest a legislative intent to clarify vague voter residency requirements, with the goal of preventing voters who had established new domiciles from voting in the precincts of their abandoned domiciles. Thus, sections 200-217 of the Elections Code were not drafted to address the specific problem raised by this case in which people left their domiciles but did not acquire new ones.
Additionally, we may presume that the Legislature was aware of prior judicial decisions that examined voter residency requirements. (Buckley v. Chadwick (1955) 45 Cal.2d 183, 193 [288 P.2d 12].) Where the [11]*11Legislature uses terms already judicially construed, “the presumption is almost irresistible that it used them in the precise and technical sense which had been placed upon them by the courts. [Citations.]” (City of Long Beach v. Marshall (1938) 11 Cal.2d 609, 620 [82 P.2d 362].) This presumption is strengthened further by the author’s statements at the committee hearing that the purpose of the bill was to bring the unclear statutory requirements into conformity with the court decisions that had defined domicile for voting purposes. The guidance provided by those decisions—Huston v. Anderson, supra, 145 Cal. 320 and People v. English, supra, 54 Cal.App. 90—aids considerably our task of reconciling section 200, subdivision (b) with the other relevant statutes. Those decisions have as their pole star the requirement that a domicile of choice cannot be created without the union of act and intent. Sections 202, subdivision (b) and 205 of the Elections Code and section 244 of the Government Code are similarly guided. Since we may presume that the Legislature did not intend to act inconsistently on the same subject (Jacobs v. State Bd. of Optometry (1978) 81 Cal.App.3d 1022, 1031 [147 Cal.Rptr. 225]), we agree with the trial court that section 200, subdivision (b) must be read in light of the other statutes to ensure that, for voting purposes, “everybody belongs somewhere.”
With this principle in mind, we return to the facts of the present case. It is undisputed that when the students whose votes are at issue registered to vote on campus, sometime before the autumn of 1983, they satisfied the three requirements of section 200, subdivision (b). Their habitation was fixed, they lacked the present intention to move elsewhere and, when absent, they viewed their campus accommodations as the place to which they intended to return. It is also without dispute that when these students returned to school in the autumn of 1983 and resided temporarily in the off-campus homes or apartments of friends, in cars parked in remote campus parking lots, or in tents pitched under the campus redwoods, they no longer satisfied the section 200, subdivision (b) requirements, because their habitation was not fixed, they intended to move elsewhere and, when absent, they did not necessarily view their temporary accommodations as the place to which they intended to return. Bearing in mind the principle that one can never be without a domicile, the question we must resolve is, “ Where were these students domiciled for voting purposes when they resided at their temporary locations during the autumn of 1983?”
To answer the question, we have before us three alternatives: 1) the domiciles which the students would eventually establish, i.e., their “future domiciles”; 2) the location of the students’ temporary residences (i.e., their residences on the last day of voter registration); or 3) the location of the [12]*12students’ abandoned domiciles.6 Alternative number one, the students’ future domiciles, is inappropriate; unlike their counterparts whose votes the trial court invalidated, the students whose votes are at issue had not yet established new domiciles. Thus, many if not all of these students were obviously unable to identify the location of their future domiciles, and the law does not demand such prescience. Alternative number two, the students’ temporary residences, is also inappropriate. Use of such residences for voting purposes would ignore the section 200, subdivision (b) requirements of a fixed habitation, the lack of a present intention to move elsewhere, and the intention, when absent, to return to the temporary accommodations. Moreover, allowing people who abandon their domiciles to vote in the precincts of their current temporary residences would create a system in which people could vote anywhere they chose, regardless of their ties to the community. Voters who abandon their domiciles could temporarily stay in precincts where their votes would have the greatest impact. We decline to allow such precinct shopping.7
Alternative three, the former domicile, presents the logical choice. It is the only location where the student had satisfied the requirements of section 200, subdivision (b). It is also consistent with the statutory principle that one’s domicile is unaffected by one’s relocation where that relocation is accomplished without the intent to make the new residence one’s domicile. (Elec. Code, § 205.) Finally, it ensures the continued integrity of the legislative mandate codified in Government Code section 244 that no one can be without a domicile.
We agree with the dissent that the main concern here is forum (or precinct) shopping and that the legislative goal of the statutes in question was [13]*13the deterrence of election fraud. However, we believe this concern is best met and the legislative objective best served by the rule we adopt today.
Under the dissent’s approach, a voter would have an incentive to move into an area temporarily to attempt to establish a domicile for a given election. The dissent provides no limiting standards to control fraud; one who claimed to have left a prior domicile and had not established a new one would be allowed to vote wherever he or she happened to be at the time registration closed. Only by keeping an eye on each such voter after the election could it be determined if the claim had been fraudulent. Our approach offers the necessary standards to prevent such carpetbagging; it leaves a voter where he or she was unless and until a new domicile is established under standard principles. The decision to move cannot be made at the last minute for voting purposes alone. Our approach can be faulted at most for possibly not deterring a voter from returning to a former location to vote by falsely claiming not to have established a new domicile elsewhere. But such fraud would be more noticeable and thus easier to detect than a fraudulent claim that an old domicile had been abandoned such that the individual should be allowed to vote in a new, albeit temporary, locale.
Our “looking backward” in time to one’s “past” domicile for voting purposes has both legislative and judicial precedent. Section 217 of the Elections Code, enacted contemporaneously with section 200, subdivision (b), entitles a duly registered voter in any precinct in California who removes therefrom within 28 days prior to an election to vote in the voter’s abandoned precinct. The purpose of the statute is to assure that the voter is not disenfranchised. (Kagan v. Kearney (1978) 85 Cal.App.3d 1010, 1017 [149 Cal.Rptr. 867].) As our previous discussion of the circumstances surrounding the enactment of sections 200 through 217 explains, however, the underlying premise of these enactments is that the voter has acquired a new domicile. Hence, the 28-day rule of Elections Code section 217 does not directly address the situation presented here, where no new domicile has in fact been established. Nevertheless, we adopt the statutory scheme underlying Elections Code sections 202, 205 and 217, and Government Code sections 243 and 244, that the voters retain their “current” domiciles until they acquire—through the union of act and intent—new domiciles.
Policy considerations also support the use of students’ abandoned domiciles for voting purposes. Our adoption of the trial court’s rule avoids disenfranchisement. Were we to adopt the holding of the Court of Appeal, anyone who moved from one domicile and had not yet established another would be left without a domicile and thus would be unable to vote anywhere during the period of travel. University students would be especially hard hit, as it is not uncommon for them to relocate at summer’s beginning [14]*14or end, precisely when voter registration periods close. In communities with large student populations and low vacancy rates, the student’s search for a new domicile can be particularly exasperating—and time consuming. Thus, under the Court of Appeal’s holding, many students would be subject to disenfranchisement. Such a result is, in itself, intolerable; it also conflicts with our holding that no construction of an election law should be indulged that would disenfranchise any voter if the law is reasonably susceptible to any other meaning (Otsuka v. Hite (1966) 64 Cal.2d 596, 603-604 [51 Cal.Rptr. 284, 414 P.2d 412]), and it ignores our holding that students 18 years of age or older must be treated the same as other California residents for voter registration purposes (Jolicoeur v. Mihaly (1971) 5 Cal.3d 565 [96 Cal.Rptr. 697, 488 P.2d 1]).
Specifically, the Court of Appeal has disenfranchised the students by creating an implied presumption that a new domicile is created whenever a person intends to abandon his or her former domicile. The Court of Appeal held: “A person who has moved from his or her voting domicile and who has no intention ever to return there to live does not satisfy [the requirements of section 200, subdivision (b)]. We conclude as a matter of law that such a person is no longer domiciled for voting purposes in the place from which he or she has moved, and necessarily intends to acquire a new domicile elsewhere, regardless of his or her subjective expressions of intent with respect to that acquisition.” (Italics added.) The problem with the Court of Appeal’s analysis is that the students in this case had not in fact acquired new domiciles elsewhere. They had merely established residences. The acquisition of a new domicile requires the union of act and intent. Even if the students intended to acquire new domiciles in the abstract, they had not yet moved to a place where they intended to remain.
The result of the Court of Appeal’s presumption is that the students cannot vote in their former domiciles, because they have abandoned them; they cannot vote in the precincts of their current residences, because they do not have the intentions to remain and hence cannot qualify their residence as their domicile; and they cannot vote in their future domiciles, because they do not yet reside there. Such a disenfranchisement cannot be sustained.
Our holding in this case is narrow in its scope. We hold that when a person leaves his or her domicile with the intention to abandon it, and when that person currently resides in a place in which he or she does not intend to remain, that person may vote in the precinct of his or her former domicile until a new domicile has been acquired.
[15]*15Conclusion
The judgment of the Court of Appeal is reversed with directions to affirm the judgment of the trial court confirming the election of Jane Weed. Parties to bear their own costs.
Mosk, J., Broussard, J., and Arguelles, J., concurred.