Homeless People Have The Right To Vote, But Face Huge Barriers

As next Tuesday’s election rapidly approaches, low-income Americans still face daunting challenges to get to the polls, particularly those who are homeless. In a recent article for Governing, Jule Pattison-Gordon, a senior staff writer for Government Technology, explored the barriers homeless people continue to face in exercising their right to vote as well as the efforts some states are making to increase voting accessibility. Spotlight spoke with Pattison-Gordon recently; the transcript of that conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Why don’t we start with the best estimate you found for the percentage of homeless Americans who vote.

The main figure that I’ve been seeing is from 2012 from the University of Southern California that says about 10% of people who are homeless voted compared to 54% of the overall voting population.

And as you point out, the number of homeless people has unfortunately expanded fairly dramatically since those figures came out.

Yes, I believe the latest Point in Time survey from HUD had the highest numbers since that study began in 2007.

Could you walk through some of the barriers people who are homeless face in trying to register to vote and to vote?

One, of course, that jumps to mind is what do you do if you need to register to vote and don’t have a stable address, whether you’re living in shelters, whether you’re bouncing between friends’ homes, or whether you’re on the street. The federal form, at least, explicitly says you can give a physical description of where you stay, even if that’s a park or a street corner. And I think about half of states allow voters to draw a map on this registration showing where they live.

Some states have taken other approaches. Minnesota has what’s called a vouching system, and they’ve actually had that for a couple decades. It says that if you have a non-traditional address, and that can include people are homeless or otherwise without a traditional street address, you get someone else who’s a registered voter in your precinct to come and swear under penalty of perjury that you really do live where you claim. And they also accompany that with a level of an ID requirement. But of course, there are still a lot of challenges.

Also, the voting ID question comes up. Not all states, of course, require this. And some states are more lenient on what they require and let you, for example, file an affidavit or get some kind of exemption from IDs while others really say you need to have one on election day or return with one a few days later. And if you’re in an unstable situation, that can be hard to do. IDs can get lost when police break up their encampments. They can seize a lot of property. Documents can get stolen at shelters or if someone is sleeping on the street, documents can get damaged. And these are documents that can be very difficult to replace.

There are alternative approaches that some states have considered. Indiana allows an exemption if you say you’re indigent, and there’s a couple other situations where you can get an exemption, although you do have to be able to visit the counsel’s office in a certain timeframe to say that you merit this exemption. In this piece, I talked to Donald Whitehead, the executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, and one thing he suggested was that if you’re going to require IDs, maybe library cards or benefit cards could be a bit easier to get in terms of a state-issued ID.

That’s an interesting idea. Though, in the current political climate, those sorts of reforms are probably even more difficult to pass than they were before in some states.

I think the Brennan Center had a roundup of voter ID policies going into effect for this fall. And it’s a real mix of some states that are expanding the kind of IDs you can use, and some states that are really, really restricting it.

Are there other states besides Indiana and Minnesota that are doing interesting things to try to offer more ways for the homeless to vote?

There are a couple things. There’s something called the vote center model, which can be useful for people who have trouble getting to the polls on election day. Under that model, instead of being assigned to one specific polling location, you can cast your ballot at different vote centers throughout that jurisdiction. That would be helpful if you’re having trouble securing transit. And for people living in shelters, it can be tricky getting back to your shelter with these tight cutoff times, which may not leave a lot of time to get to the polls.

Mail voting can be helpful for that reason too, though there are questions about shelters having shared mail ballots. There needs to be a little more work to make sure that what’s mailed gets to the right person. Early voting can also be helpful. There’s been suggestions of putting voting locations at places people are already going to, like food banks, libraries, and social service centers.

Oregon is one of the states that says if you don’t have reliable mail service or a home address, you can get ballots sent to places you frequent. Georgia requires you going to the registrar’s office if you’re unhoused to use that as your mailing and registration address. But there’s been some concern raised that a registrar’s office isn’t necessarily set up to distribute mail, so you’re asking the voters to be able to regularly get out to there and check for mail or risk missing something.

That seems particularly daunting for this population

Marcy Thompson, vice president for programs and policy at the National Alliance to End Homelessness, was also saying that when you’re asking people who are experiencing homelessness to go to a particular location to do an activity, there can be concerns that they are going to be subjected to prejudice because they are homeless. And it may be a particular concern for people who are homeless because they are fleeing domestic violence. They may not want to go to predictable location.

And is there anything on the federal level that’s being contemplated that you ran across in your reporting?

Honestly, I’m not sure I can speak a lot to that.

What about states that are instituting changes that would make things more difficult for homeless people?

I would say just things like the Brennan Center notes, such as some states that are reducing the time you have to apply for a return of mail ballot or reducing the availability of ballot drop boxes. It also highlights some states that are having stricter ID policies—Arkansas removed the option for voters to present a sworn statement instead of presenting an ID, for example. Ohio reduced the kinds of IDs accepted to just four. You can imagine those could make things a little more difficult.

Is there anything I didn’t ask or anything else you that you would like to add?

I’d just note a couple things that were interesting to me that I discovered in this reporting. One thing is there’s just misinformation about people who are homeless, who don’t always know that they can use a shelter address and often hear things that make them think they’re not able to actually vote. And discrimination can be an issue. People have been turned away from the polls because they may not have the hygiene they need when they’re living without a home. A lot of states do have election workers undergo training, but not all of them seem to specifically require it. Poll workers sometimes might not know how to handle someone who doesn’t have a traditional address and that makes it harder for someone who already struggled to get there.

And probably many people, when thinking about this, have the stereotypical homeless person in mind, the person who has been on the streets perhaps for a long period of time. But you don’t necessarily think about victims of domestic violence or, increasingly, people who have lost their homes through extreme weather. There are people in FEMA trailers now in huge numbers.

Absolutely. And one thing you hear about too is a lot of changes made for accessibility that are targeted at one population can really help like a wider range of people too. Efforts to make voting easier for people who are homeless also make it easier for people who for other reasons can’t get to the polls—who have child care or elder care responsibility, or trouble getting time off work.