Homeless voters will face new barriers under Georgia voting law

The Georgia Capitol Building is a striking feature of the Atlanta skyline. Atop its gilded neoclassical dome is a 26-foot statue of “Miss Freedom,” who stands holding a torch in her right hand and a sword in her left. She is a symbol of the values the Georgia legislature vows to uphold every day: wisdom, justice, moderation and courage.

But just 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 like emergency food and job readiness programs at the nearby Central Outreach and Advocacy Center, run by Central Presbyterian Church.

Many homeless shelters and advocacy groups in the area allow guests to rely on them for another important service: registering to vote. Providing an address can be another hurdle. In the past, the state has kept loose guidelines for how Georgia’s homeless residents can mark their residence, allowing them to tag the name of a bridge or the field where they sleep.

However, as of early 2025, these unofficial addresses will no longer be accepted for voter registration purposes due to a recently passed election law known as SB 189. While state lawmakers say the law will help address the problems facing the homeless, homeless advocates say it will likely make things worse.

SB 189 creates new obstacles

In Fulton County, in the Atlanta area, more than 7,000 people registered to vote at homeless shelters alone, according to Fair Fight, a voting rights nonprofit founded by former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams.

SB 189 requires any voter without a current address to register to vote at their county registrar’s office. The change also means that any election-related mail — such as a notice of objection to voter registration or an absentee ballot — will be sent there.

During a committee hearing discussing an early draft of a measure requiring homeless voters to register with their local registrar’s office, Sen. Max Burns, a Republican, argued that the new guidelines would help expand voting access among homeless people.

Requiring voters experiencing homelessness to register with county registrars’ offices was intended to “ensure that homeless people are not excluded from the voting process,” Burns said. “The idea is to make sure that they are included, and included in a meaningful way, so that they can receive communications from their local election officials or the secretary of state’s office in a place where their mail is protected.”

But advocates for homeless people in Georgia have criticized the new law, saying it could end up having the opposite effect.

Fair Fight CEO Lauren Groh-Wargo said that in addition to adding confusion to the already difficult voting process, the law fails to address major barriers homeless residents may face.

“How is someone who has housing security issues supposed to get their mail in a location that’s far from where they are, and what does that mean in terms of the precinct that they’re assigned to?” she said. “Because now votes cast outside of their precinct don’t get counted on Election Day.”

Homeless advocates say that before SB 189 was passed, homeless voters had the freedom to register at locations that were most convenient for them, which “didn’t prevent them from registering and getting important information about where to go and what was happening with local or national elections,” said Raphael Holloway, CEO of the Gateway Center, a homeless outreach center in downtown Atlanta.

He added that forcing people to register with a government office could make it less likely that voters will want to register at all.

“Some of our guests may have concerns about how they physically present themselves and whether they will be able to enter or be able to enter these government buildings,” Holloway said. “Because what education will there be for security and others when they come into the building to allow our guests to enter and exit?”

He also expressed concerns about whether county registrars’ offices would be willing and able to act as a voter registration intermediary for the thousands of homeless people.

“I think there could be some potential tension if people have to go to the Fulton County voter registration office instead of picking up (their mail) at a place where they have a relationship or feel more comfortable having access to it,” Holloway said.

How Mass Voter Challenges Affect Homeless Voters

Last October, James McWhorter appeared before the DeKalb County Board of Elections to defend his right to vote. Another DeKalb County resident, Gail Lee, reported his name to county election officials as one of nearly 250 voter registrations that she said were associated with an address other than his residential address.

Although two volunteers from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Georgia showed up at the meeting to explain that non-residential addresses, such as post office boxes, are often used on voter registration forms by homeless people as well as victims of domestic violence, Lee insisted that providing such addresses is tantamount to providing false information to officials and is therefore a crime.

Lee, who is retired, is one of a number of activists across the state who are working to “clean up” voter registrations, trying to remove hundreds of people from local voter registrations to curb what she sees as fraud that caused former President Donald Trump to lose the 2020 presidential election.

The rise of mass voter challenges fueled by technology means that homeless people are also becoming disproportionately targeted by election conspiracy theorists, who urge local election boards to purge people they believe are incorrectly registered.

McWhorter, a barbershop owner and Army veteran, was one of the Georgia residents drawn into the mass challenge. When he last registered to vote, in 2008, he was homeless, he told the Board of Elections. At the time, he used his business as a place to sleep, shower and get his mail. He used the mail to apply for a Georgia ID card, which is required for residents to vote.

“I had no roof over my head and I couldn’t go to the transportation department with a circle on the map that would show me where I lived,” he told the board.

“For you to challenge me is your right as a citizen of DeKalb County,” he added, turning to Lee. “But I served to give you that right.”

Voting rights advocates say it’s not unusual for some of the state’s most disadvantaged residents to be drawn into mass voting rights challenges.

“The challenges are being applied to people who don’t necessarily have unusual addresses, but unusual situations,” said Stephanie Jackson Ali, policy director at the New Georgia Project. “Our seniors, our youth, our vulnerable, poor populations, those are the people who are most impacted.”

The ACLU of Georgia, which has announced it will sue Gov. Brian Kemp for passing SB 189, has expressed similar concerns about the impact the new law will have on voters experiencing homelessness.

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

When combined with other systemic challenges that come with homelessness, the challenges of voting can be insurmountable for homeless voters who want to gain the right to vote.

“Creating clarity for homeless voters about where to register is a positive thing, but the way SB 189 is being implemented raises a lot of concerns,” said Andrew Garber, a staff attorney at the Brennan Center for Justice who has been tracking mass voter challenges since 2021. “Boards of elections are not set up to be the post office for voters in their county. It’s not clear that they had the infrastructure to receive and distribute mail to homeless voters. Additionally, if homeless voters don’t know that their mail is going to the county clerk’s office, they could miss important election mail, such as a notice that they’ve been challenged. If they don’t receive it, they won’t be able to respond, and that could ultimately disenfranchise them.”

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