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, 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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
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, 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, 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 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 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 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. 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 of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts in my heart Radio, you can visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,