You Can’t Vote if You’re Homeless
Did you know you can’t vote if you have no fixed address? I suppose this is obvious, given that political ridings are based upon where you live. But, really, this sickens me.
The homeless in this province are those who are suffering the most as a result of the out-of-control economy, and they don’t even have the right to vote? Never mind that they’re Canadian citizens and residents of Alberta, if they don’t have a home, they don’t have a vote.
Now, I don’t know how this could be solved. Maybe they could use the address of a homeless shelter. But, that would require that they know the address of a shelter (which they may not, especially if they are newly homeless).But, no doubt, someone in the bureaucracy would decided that, in order for someone to list a shelter as their address, they’d have to actually have spent a few nights in the shelter and been issued some sort of documentation to prove it.
Considering that we don’t have nearly enough beds for homeless people as it is, such a requirement would mean that a lot of people would still not be able to vote.
I wish I had a solution to this problem. Unfortunately, all I can come up with is anger and disgust.