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Comment by macilacilove | Hacker News Reader

In which country do you loose the power to vote when you become homeless? I suspect that was not a democratic country in the first place.

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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.

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.

It is difficult to register to vote when you don't have a home address.

Please don’t take it personally if you live there, but I find it so absurd all the bullshit you need to go through to vote in the US.

Why on earth is a home address needed to vote? Of course you need to vote where you are registered, I cannot vote in another city beside mine too, but even if I lose my house today I can keep voting in my city until I have a document that proves my identity, eventually for all my life.

Pardon my rant, it is not towards you or your comment, but some policies in the US are simply crazy.

Americans also consider using id to vote racist / discriminatory so usually these discussions end up in circles. AFAIK only anglo countries don't use id in the developed world to vote.

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