Homelessness comes with a new, unique set of challenges during an election cycle. However, homeless residents have protections, including voting rights.
Nationwide, only 10% of unhoused people vote each year, according to the Institute of Political Social Work at the University of Connecticut.
Many social workers in Connecticut are working to educate unhoused residents about their voting rights, according to UConn Social Work professor Tanya Rhodes Smith,director of the Nancy A. Humphreys Institute for Political Social Work.
“When you ask somebody if they would like to check their voter registration, they may say, ‘I’m not eligible,’ or ‘I’ve never voted,’ and that’s really important information for you to know,” Rhodes Smith said. “It really tells a story about them.”
About 60% of eligible voters turnout in presidential election years, but increasing voting rates is important for local elections as well, Rhodes Smith said.
“When you have 10% to 15% [voter turnout], that’s not an accountable government, that’s a government that’s accountable to the 10% to 15%,” Rhodes Smith said. “We’ve seen it over and over in Bridgeport, that nothing changes because that turnout rate doesn’t go up, and so there is no accountability when you have an unhealthy democracy.”
In Connecticut, homeless residents can register to vote using the address of a shelter where they’ve stayed or use a relative’s address.
While a form of identification is required, voters don’t need to provide a driver’s license. Identification can include a credit card, mailed voter registration confirmation or a social security card.
For most polling locations in the state, voter identification must include a combination of name and address, name and signature or name and photograph, according to the office of the Secretary of the State.
The state tries to make voting more accessible, including hundreds of translators to work polls across Connecticut and social workers to help fill out voter registration, Hartford’s Democratic Registrar of Voters Giselle Feliciano said.
Hartford Public Library is the only library in Connecticut that allows unhoused residents to use its address to register to vote.
“Regardless of where you sleep, you still have the right to vote,” Feliciano said. “You can sleep on the bench park at Bushnell Park, you can live in a shelter.”
This story was first published Oct. 10, 2024 by Connecticut Public.