Getting out the homeless vote

We may not think of homeless people as voters, but according to Anna Kopec, we should.

Kopec, a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto, says while homeless people are able to vote, they, and the people who serve them, often don't know it.

And in her view, that's a problem. 

As a democratic state we are trying to make policies to better the most vulnerable in our society...now if we don't actually hear from the most vulnerable, how do we know that those policies are in any way actually serving them?- Anna Kopec

​​Kopec says that nearly 60 per cent of the homeless people she interviewed didn't know they could vote.

Many thought that they needed an address — and some who did know, had been turned down at polls in the past.

"They were forced to sit and wait because the polling staff did not know how to go about allowing the individual to vote," she says. 

"So when an individual  without a permanent address comes in, as embarrassing as that may already be for that individual if you can imagine, then they come in and they're pulled to the side and there's this commotion, and that happens at all levels."

There is this stereotype that homeless people don't know much or don't care enough to learn or are so ostracized that they don't learn anything that's going on in the real world. Well, I have to tell you that it's completely the opposite.- Anna Kopec

Kopec, who did her research in Toronto but is from Edmonton, says she learned a lot about local and provincial politics from the people she surveyed.

To make it easier for individuals to make it to the polls, Kopec says the homeless population must be recognized as potential voters.

"They're not seen as voters and the politicians I talked to often said, 'they don't vote, so our campaign efforts are focused on populations that do vote' "

Secondly, Kopec says there needs to be better coordination between all levels of government, elections agencies and service providers.

Kopec strongly believes that if these changes were made and electoral systems were more accessible, people would take advantage.

"I think that if they were given the chance, it does come down to personal choice, but I can say with some level of certainty that from my sample, I think a majority of those that didn't vote or didn't know they could vote would do so."