10 ms·

My reading of the poster's comment was that you don't literally lose your right to vote but may effectively lose your right to vote simply through bureaucrati

My reading of the poster's comment was that you don't literally lose your right to vote but may *effectively* lose your right to vote simply through bureaucratic requirements. In the US, you can still vote as a homeless person, however you are required to list where you reside. A quick google led me to the instructions "mark your residence as a homeless shelter" which still could be prohibitive to those who chose not to live in a shelter, those experiencing homelessness in areas without shelters, etc. It may seem trivial to some -- "just vote somewhere with a shelter" but it's worth noting that homelessness as a state is an extreme burden and these kind of options simply may not exist depending on an individual.

tdeck 5y ago
Voting alone gives you very little meaningful power in most liberal democracies. In order to have a meaningful influence on policy, you need to have either a lot of money (the easier way) or a lot of time and focused energy to organize constituencies (the hard way). Very poor people tend to have neither. Obviously they don't have money, but they also tend to be overwhelmed with the daily struggle to stay alive, or emotionally beaten down by dealing with various kinds of trauma. That means even when homeless people manage to vote individually, they aren't likely to find politicians who cater to their needs directly. Instead the best they can hope for is a politician who caters to middle-class and wealthy people who care about the abstract concept of homelessness and have their own ideas about how to address it.