How Do Homeless Americans Vote?

Not having a permanent address or access to identifying documents can make voting in U.S. elections nearly impossible. Learn more about these challenges -- and what some organizations are doing to help -- in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey
brain Stuff, Lauren Bogelbaum here. Voting is the cornerstone of
American democracy, but it can be a bit of a pain.
Election day in the US is always a Tuesdays back
in the middle of the work week. If you move
to a new state or county, you need to reregister,

(00:21):
and state voter I D requirements change all the time,
so you could possibly show up to a polling station,
wait in line, and still get turned away. Now, imagine
that you're homeless in America or unhoused, which is an
often preferred term because, after all, home can mean a
lot of things. You might move around too frequently to

(00:43):
maintain a stable mailing address. You might have lost your
state issued I D let alone your Social Security card
and birth certificate. You might not be able to afford
transportation to the county elections office or your local polling place,
and frankly, you probably have a lot more pressing problems
than registering to vote. So while unhoused people have every

(01:04):
right to vote in US elections and have a vested
interest in influencing policy on housing and poverty, the obstacles
to successfully registering and voting while unhoused can be insurmountable. First,
there's the residents and mailing address issue. Interestingly, none of
the fifty states requires that voters live in a traditional residence.

(01:26):
On voter registration forums, you can put a shelter address,
a street corner, a park bench. You can even attach
a hand drawn map, and that's fine for establishing that
you're a resident of the state and county. But many
states also required that you provide a mailing address where
you can actually receive mail. Again, that can be a
shelter or a friend or relative's house, but it cannot

(01:48):
be a p O box, and it can't be a
park bench. While it's easy for many Americans to provide
an alternate address where they could receive mail, that's not
always the case for people who don't have a fixed
stidents and without a fixed address to receive election notices
from the county clerk's office, Unhoused voters can be wiped
from voter registration roles. We spoke with Tristia Bauman, senior

(02:12):
attorney with the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty.
She referenced to the laws that criminalize sleeping or camping
in public places, and said it's important to remember that
homelessness is an inherently unstable state. Those laws have the
effect of displacing people from the areas where they normally
live and have connections. The lack of an address and

(02:33):
the lack of ability to stay in one location lawfully
conspired to make it ever more difficult for homeless people
to register to vote or vote by mail. Lack of
identification is another big challenge for unhoused voters, as there
are ten states was strict ID laws, meaning that you
cannot vote on election day without presenting some kind of

(02:54):
valid government issued identification. Another twenty four states had non
strict or i D laws that allow voters without an
i D to sign an affidavit swearing to their identity.
Even in states without voter ID laws, first time voters
registering online or by mail are required to provide a
driver's license number or copies of a utility bill, bank statement,

(03:16):
or other document certifying their residency. If they fail to
provide identification during first time registration, they'll be asked to
show an i D on election day. While obtaining a
driver's license or state issued i D is free in
most states, that doesn't mean it's easy for an unhoused
person to jump through the administrative hoops to make it happen. Poor, elderly,

(03:38):
and unhoused people are far more likely to not have
a state issued i D, which is why voter ID
laws have been challenged as discriminatory. Then there's the issue
of safeguarding personal property. Even if an unhoused person is
lucky enough to have an ID in their possession, there
are many ways for those documents to get lost or stolen,
even at the hands of police. A Ballman said, local

(04:01):
governments often respond to illegal homeless encampments by coming in
and doing a clean up that results in the seizure
and destruction of a homeless person's property. You could potentially
lose your i D, or your birth certificate or Social
Security card, or any of the other prerequisite items that
you need to register. The good news is that advocacy
groups like the National Coalition for the Homeless have created

(04:24):
resources like a Voting Rights Guide to help shelters, drop
in centers, food pantries, and other nonprofit groups organize voter
registration drives to help unhoused individuals register and get to
the polls. And despite the daunting bureaucratic hurdles facing unhoused voters.
There are a handful of states that specifically offer exemptions

(04:44):
for unhoused citizens, a trend that will hopefully continue. In Indiana,
for example, which is a strict photo I D state,
you can register and vote without an I D if
you claim indigent status. And in Oregon, unhoused voters can
use the county election office is address as their mailing address.

(05:07):
Today's episode was written by Dave Ruse and produced by
Tyler Clang. For more on listen lots of other topics,
visit how stuff works dot com. Brain Stuff is production
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