Lukas Flippo, Senior Photographer

As few as 10 percent of homeless people vote in elections, according to a 2012 study by the National Coalition for the Homeless. 

Unhoused people face unique obstacles when it comes to both registering and showing up at the ballot box.  

In Connecticut, voters must show both identification and proof of residency. Typically, this is satisfied by a photo ID with the voter’s name and address or a document such as a bill or paycheck that offers the same information. 

For homeless people, it can be difficult to keep up with identifying documents without the security of a stable residence, and many cannot afford the fees required to obtain an ID.  

Unhoused people are still eligible to vote, however. 

According to Tanya Rhodes Smith, director of University of Connecticut’s Institute for Political Social Work, a lack of state ID prevents many homeless voters from using Connecticut’s online registration services. Instead, they must fill out voter registration forms by hand, which are available on the Secretary of State website.

Giselle Feliciano, the Democratic registrar of voters in Hartford, explained that when completing this form, applicants must provide their date of birth and either their driver’s license number or the last four digits of their social security number. If they do not provide either, they must show ID upon coming in to vote. 

If a voter does not have an ID, homeless voters still have an array of ways to make their vote count. They can show a social security card, a MasterCard, a bill or registration confirmation correspondence, Feliciano said. If a voter has none of these, then they may be asked to sign an affidavit form stating that they are who they say they are. However, not all registrars require this, Feliciano said, because a registration form itself serves as an affidavit. 

When it comes to providing an address, Feliciano said, voters must simply provide the address where they lay their head, no matter where that may be. 

“Regardless of where you sleep, you still have the right to vote,” Feliciano said. “So you can sleep on the park bench, you can live in a shelter.”

She noted, however, that in the separate mailing address box, it is important to provide an address where they can actually receive mail, regardless if the addresses may not match. 

While this may pose an additional obstacle for homeless voters, a coalition of shelters aims to provide reliable mailing addresses for prospective voters. According to Katherine Whitney, from the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness, shelters that are a part of their coalition may let people experiencing homelessness use their addresses for mail, even if they are not living at the shelter. 

Whitney also said CCEH is encouraging local public libraries to provide mailing address services to local unhoused residents — which is something the Hartford Public Library already does — and she encouraged homeless voters to ask their local library if they can use its address to receive their mail.

People experiencing homelessness may also ask family members or friends to receive their mail, Whitney said. 

Local voting can impact housing policy

The 2023 Connecticut municipal elections drew only about 33 percent of eligible voters, down from the 60 percent that vote during presidential elections, according to Danielle Hubley, a manager at Partnership for Strong Communities — a nonprofit focused on equitable housing in Connecticut. With small turnout in local elections, Hubley explained, individual voters — including homeless voters — can make a sizable impact in housing policy. 

“Broader housing reform efforts haven’t really been a major topic on the national stage at the presidential level. Most of housing policy is shaped at the state and local level,” Hubley said. “When you consider that only 30 percent of all eligible voters are turning out to the polls in these local elections, your single vote can really end up counting for so much more than you may think it does.” 

Hubley added voting and housing are very closely related to each other because whoever ends up in office has the potential to improve or worsen problems in the housing landscape, such as affordability or availability. Sometimes, ballots even include measures related to housing decisions, giving voters the power to directly drive housing policy.

The next election is on Nov. 5. Early voting in Connecticut opened on Monday. 

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LILY BELLE POLING
Lily Belle Poling covers housing and homelessness and climate and the environment. She is also a production and design editor and lays out the weekly print. Originally from Montgomery, Alabama, she is a sophomore in Branford College majoring in Global Affairs and English.