Homeless voters in Georgia won't be able to register where they stay as of next year

Georgia’s capitol building is a striking feature in the Atlanta skyline. Atop a gilded neoclassical dome sits a 26-foot-tall statue of “Miss Freedom,” who stands holding a torch in her right hand, and a sword in her left. She serves as an emblem of the values the Georgia legislature vows each day to uphold: wisdom, justice, moderation and courage.

Yet right across the street, in the shadow of the state capitol, sit some of the state’s most disenfranchised citizens. Homeless Georgians often line the street across from the Golden Dome, many of them to access services such as emergency food and job readiness programs at the nearby Central Outreach and Advocacy Center , hosted by the Central Presbyterian Church.

Many homeless shelters and advocacy organizations in the area allow guests to rely on them for another crucial service: Registering to vote. Providing an address can be yet another hurdle. In the past, the state has maintained loose guidelines for how Georgia’s homeless residents have been able to demarcate their place of residence, allowing them to mark down the name of a bridge or field in which they sleep.

But starting at the beginning of 2025, these unofficial addresses will no longer be accepted for voter registration purposes because of a newly-passed election law, known as SB 189. Though state legislators say the law will help address the problems faced by unhoused residents, advocates for the homeless say it is likely to make things even worse.

SB 189 creates new hurdles

In Fulton County alone, in the Atlanta area, over 7,000 individuals were registered to vote at homeless shelters according to data from Fair Fight, a nonprofit voting rights group founded by former Democratic candidate for governor, Stacey Abrams.

SB 189 requires any voter without a current address to register to vote at their county registrar's office, a shift that would also mean any election-related mail — such as a notice of a challenge to their voter registration, or an absentee ballot — would be sent there as well.

In a committee hearing where an early draft of the provision requiring homeless voters to register at their local registrar’s office was workshopped, Sen. Max Burns, a Republican, argued that the new guidelines would help increase access to voting among the unhoused.

Mandating that voters experiencing homelessness register at county registrar offices was intended to “make sure that the homeless are not excluded from the voting process,” Burns said. “It’s to ensure that they are included, and included in a way that is meaningful, so that they can receive communication from their local election officials or from the secretary of state at a location where their mail is protected.”

However, advocates for individuals experiencing homelessness in Georgia have criticized the new legislation, saying that in effect, it may do the opposite.

In addition to adding confusion to an already-difficult voting process, Fair Fight CEO Lauren Groh-Wargo said the law fails to take into account key barriers that homeless residents may be experiencing.

“How is somebody who is having housing insecurity supposed to get their mail at a place far from where they are, and what does that mean in terms of the precinct they're assigned to?” she said. “Because now, out-of-precinct votes aren't counted on Election Day.”

Before the passage of SB 189, advocates said, homeless voters had the flexibility to register at the places most convenient to them, options “that didn't stand in the way of their ability to get registered and get the important communications that come out about where to go and things going on with local or national elections,” said Raphael Holloway, the CEO of the Gateway Center, a homelessness service center located in downtown Atlanta.

Forcing people to register at a government office, he added, may reduce the likelihood that these voters will be willing to register at all.

“For some of our guests, there may be concerns on how they physically present, and will they be allowed in or accepted to come into these government buildings,” Holloway said. “Because what's the education going to be with the security and other folks when they're coming to the building to allow our guests to be able to come in and out?”

He also expressed concerns about how willing or able county registrar offices would be to serve as a voter registration proxy for thousands of unhoused residents.

“I think there's some potential tension that could arise from people needing to go to the Fulton County voter registration office, versus getting [their mail] at a place where they have a relationship and or feel more comfortable accessing,” Holloway said.

How mass voter challenges impact unhoused voters

Last October, James McWhorter appeared before the DeKalb County Board of Elections to defend his right to vote. A fellow DeKalb County resident, Gail Lee, had submitted his name to county election officials as one of nearly 250 voter registrations she said were linked to a nonresidential address.

Though two volunteers with the ACLU of Georgia appeared at the meeting to explain that non-residential addresses like P.O. boxes were often used on voter registration forms by those experiencing homelessness, as well as victims of domestic violence, Lee insisted that the addresses amounted to submitting false information to officials, and were therefore a felony.

Lee, who is retired, is one of numerous activists across the state dedicated to “cleaning” the state’s voter rolls, attempting to remove hundreds of people from local voter rolls in an effort to reduce what she sees as fraud that caused former President Donald Trump to lose the 2020 presidential election.

The rise in technology-driven mass voter challenges means that homeless people are also disproportionately being targeted by election conspiracy theorists, who have been urging local election boards to kick what they see as improperly registered individuals off the voter rolls.

McWhorter, a barber shop owner and an Army veteran, was just one such Georgia resident who was caught up in a mass challenge. When he last registered to vote, back in 2008, he was experiencing homelessness, he explained to the Board of Elections. At the time, he had been using his shop as a place to sleep, bathe and receive mail. He used that mail to apply for a Georgia-issued ID, which is required for residents seeking to cast a vote.

“I was homeless, and I couldn’t go to the DMV with a circle on a map to show my residency,” he told the board.

“For you to be able to challenge me, you have that right as a citizen of DeKalb County,” he added, addressing Lee. “But I served to give you that right.”

Voting rights advocates say it is not unusual for some of the state’s most disadvantaged residents to get caught up in mass voter challenges.

“Challenges are being used for folks who have, not necessarily unusual addresses, but unusual situations,” said Stephanie Jackson Ali, the Policy Director at the New Georgia Project. “Our seniors, our youth, our vulnerable, poor populations, those are the folks that are getting hit hardest.”

The ACLU of Georgia, which has vowed to sue Gov. Brian Kemp over the passage of SB 189, raised similar concerns over the impact the new law will have on voters experiencing homelessness.

“Probably the first issue that we'll be bringing up [in court] is the burden on our unhoused citizens,” said Andrea Young, the ACLU of Georgia’s executive director. "I think we can agree that no one is more in need of government attention than people who have found themselves without even a place to live and are literally, in our state, sleeping under bridges and on sidewalks. This bill makes them very vulnerable to challenge.”

Combined with other systemic challenges that come with experiencing homelessness, voter challenges can prove to be an insurmountable barrier for unhoused voters seeking to access the right to vote.

“Creating clarity for unhoused voters on where to register is a positive, but the way SB 189 implements that creates a lot of concerns,” said Andrew Garber, a lawyer at the Brennan Center for Justice who has been tracking mass voter challenges since 2021. “Election boards aren’t set up to be post offices for the voters in their county. It's not clear that they had the infrastructure to receive and disseminate mail to unhoused voters. Additionally, if unhoused voters don't know their mail is going to the county office, they may miss important election mail, for example, a notice that they've been challenged. If they don't get it, then they can't respond to it, and that can ultimately disenfranchise them.”

Maya Homan is a fellow at USA TODAY based in Atlanta, where she covers Georgia politics and elections. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, as @MayaHoman.

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Homeless voters in Georgia won't be able to register where they stay as of next year