BARRIE, Ont. — Unhoused man Sheldon Drysdale, weighed down by three winter jackets, is focused on getting through his day in this city of more than 179,000 people about an hour north of Toronto.
Cities across Ontario are preparing for the Oct. 26 municipal election, but voting is not on Drysdale’s mind. He doesn’t know when it is happening or where he can go to cast a ballot.
“I don’t even know when that is,” Drysdale said when asked about the election.
Unhoused people can vote in a municipal election if they are a Canadian citizen, at least 18 years old, a resident of the municipality and not prohibited from voting under any law, Mahreen Dasoo, a senior communications advisor at Toronto Elections, said in an emailed statement.
Under Ontario’s Municipal Elections Act, people without a permanent home can determine their voting residence based on where they have most often slept or eaten over the previous five weeks, Dasoo said.
But being eligible to vote does not necessarily mean knowing how to do it.
A woman in Barrie experiencing homelessness, who asked not to be identified for her safety, said she knows little about the election. She said that without a television, the election signs she sees along the road are her main source of information. She also lost her identification, which she believes would make voting too difficult.
Summer Dresmond, who is also experiencing homelessness in Barrie, said she tried to vote but was turned away and told she needed additional documents, including identification.
Ahmad Bonakdar, senior director of research at the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness, said in an emailed interview that people without a fixed address can vote using a declaration of identity, but may not know this option exists.
Bonakdar said bringing polling stations and trauma-informed poll workers into shelters could help people experiencing homelessness participate in elections and ensure their voices are heard in decisions that directly affect them.
“People experiencing homelessness are residents with the same rights as everyone else,” Bonakdar said. “When their voices are missing, decisions get made about them without them.”
Vito Conforto, another man experiencing homelessness, said he does not know where to go or what he needs to bring to vote without a permanent address.
“I guess a permanent residence, huh?” Conforto said when asked what would make voting easier. He said he doesn’t know what ward he would vote in.
Darren Nickerson, senior manager of Good Shepherd, a non-profit organization providing health, housing and human services in Toronto and Hamilton, says shelters can help eligible residents establish a voting address by providing a letter confirming they use the shelter.
The letter would include the shelter’s address and the resident’s name, helping them explain their circumstances when going to a polling station.
John Armitage, another man staying at a shelter, said he already voted and found the process straightforward. He said he used the letter that stated the shelter as his place of residence as his voting slip.
“You gotta take an initiative with everything in this world, but it’s a democratic right,” Armitage said.
Armitage tried to convince other residents to vote, but he estimated only five people at the shelter had voted so far.
Dasoo said Toronto Elections’ Education and Outreach team “partners with city shelters, city-funded drop-in centres, and other organizations to provide low-barrier access to election information and support eligible voters without a fixed address.”
Dasoo said Toronto Elections’ outreach aims to identify and address barriers to voting.
Drysdale, however, remains uncertain, which raises the question of whether the right to vote is enough if people don’t know how to exercise it.
