’POUNDING THE PAVEMENT’ TO FIND FORGOTTEN VOTERS
Yes, homeless people can vote, and an Elections Canada outreach specialist shows them how. Verity Stevenson reports.
During this federal election, Lisa Woroniuk Restrick has been scouring parks, ravines and crack houses, looking for the people campaigners miss.
“I go to some pretty seedy places to find them and say, ‘Come on, come exercise your right to vote,’ ” the former social worker said at the Weston King Neighbourhood Centre, where she’d set up an Elections Canada booth with information on how to vote when you don’t have a fixed address.
Woroniuk Restrick’s sole focus in her 14 years with Elections Canada has been to help homeless people exercise their democratic right. She distributes Elections Canada’s new “letter of confirmation of residence” forms, which allow homeless people to use a local shelter, soup kitchen or drop-in centre as their voting address.
Before the form was created, a designated person in the community, such as a neighbour or relative, could “vouch” for a homeless person to confirm that they live in a particular riding. But the Conservative government’s Fair Elections Act restricted to one how many people a person could vouch for.
Ken Theobald, a drop-in co-ordinator at the Weston King centre, says the form is a sign Elections Canada is finally catching up with grassroots efforts to make voting easier.
“Nobody else is going to make (poverty and housing) an issue if it’s not the people with lived experience, the people struggling,” Theobald said.
Difficulties proving identity and residence aren’t the only barriers to marginalized people when it comes to voting, Woroniuk Restrick said. So is the stigma they may face at the polls. She says poll workers aren’t always aware of other avenues those without typical ID cards have and sometimes turn homeless people away.
The homeless vote isn’t one targeted by political parties, but could make up more than 5,000 voters in Toronto. Housing, the issue that may touch them the most, has largely been absent from discussion this election.
Sex work and marijuana are two other issues that get marginalized people out to the polls, according to Natalie Kallio, harm reduction co-ordinator at the Parkdale Community Health Centre.
At the centre’s weekly meeting for sex workers, “we’ve had some pretty vigorous conversations,” she said, about Bill C-36 and drug policy. “I think a lot more people within this population are going to vote this year.”
The Toronto Drop-In Network is also helping drop-in centres get marginalized people to the polls. It launched a campaign called Promote the Vote, whose newsletter offers tips on how agencies can encourage clients to vote. One of them explains a three-step process for voting without a fixed address.