Court decisions have clearly established that homeless people have voting rights. It is also possible for voters to specify a mailing address different from their residence address; in this case, the FIA location should have been interpreted as the person's mailing address. The physical location is needed because voting is closely tied to geography, e.g., precinct, municipality, and district boundaries. Ideally, there should be a form or process to do this in a straightforward way.

Larry,

As the sole Democratic candidate for Washtenaw County Clerk, I am interested in your opinion on the following. During the 2000 Presidential Election, I worked as the Elections Clerk for one of the largest of Washtenaw County's municipalities.

Hence, one of my primary responsibilities was voter registration. My office received several registrations just before the registration deadline to the address of the local FIA. I was told by the City Clerk to reject these voter registrations because "citizens are not allowed to use state agencies or businesses for purposes of voter registrations."

Obviously, these individuals were transitionally homeless or they wouldn't have used the FIA as a place to receive their mail. The hardest thing was for me to call the FIA to notify these individuals of their rejection status and have my suspicions confirmed. I remember repeating the City Clerk's words to the case worker on the other end of the phone: "If they are homeless, they must give a description of where they sleep most nights of the week, such as 'the northwest park bench in Riverside Park' or 'underneath the bridge on North Street'."

Of course, the FIA caseworker was speechless at the callous treatment our office gave to these individuals. I understand the need to have a residential address listed on voter registrations so people don't try to vote in jurisdictions where they don't live, but there has to be a better way to eliminate fraud without disenfranchising our weakest of beings.

Seriously, how could we send a voter registration card to the third park bench in Frog Island Park???