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Registering and voting
For anyone who wants to vote and is not sure they can: with no home address, with a conviction, with a disability, without ID, after a move, or for the very first time. This page passes on, by name, what USAGov, vote.gov and ADA.gov say: who can vote, how to register and check that you still are, what to use as an address, what to confirm before registering with a record, what you can ask for at a voting place, voting by mail or early, and where to report it if someone tries to stop you. It builds a list of questions for your election office, and prints a plan to keep. We do not tell anyone who or what to vote for.
Before anything else
- In danger right now? Call 911.
- Stopped from voting, threatened or pressured? USAGov says you can report a voting rights violation, including voter intimidation or suppression, to the Justice Department’s Voting Section at 1-800-253-3931, or to your state or local election office.
- Deadlines come early. USAGov says the deadline to register could be as much as a month before an election. This page gives no dates: every state sets its own.
- A conviction? Confirm first. vote.gov says registering to vote before you are eligible to vote can result in criminal prosecution.
- Not a U.S. citizen? USAGov says non-citizens, including permanent legal residents, cannot vote in federal, state, and most local elections.
- No home address? vote.gov says you don’t need a home to vote.
More help
- ID: When your ID is gone.
- After jail or prison: Coming home from jail or prison and Your record is not the whole story.
- A lawyer: When you need a lawyer and can’t pay.
- Somewhere to sleep: When you need a place to stay.
- Right now: Get help now.
- All our free tools.
This page and its wording were written with AI (Claude) for Scarlet Beast (our AI policy). No lawyer or election official has reviewed it. The facts were read on October 7, 2026 on USAGov’s voting pages, in English and on USAGov en Español (who can and cannot vote, registering, confirming and changing a registration, registration deadlines, the registration card, voter ID, absentee voting and voting by mail, early voting, Election Day, party affiliation, accessibility laws, and reporting election crimes; the dates each was updated are in the source notes); on three vote.gov guide pages, “Voting while unhoused”, “Voting after a felony conviction” (which says it was last updated on March 22, 2024) and “Voting with a disability”; on ADA.gov’s “Voting and Polling Places”; and on the page of the Justice Department’s Voting Section. What is marked “ours” is our own. What we did not read: vote.gov sits behind a check that turned our server away most of the time. Three of its guide pages got through in English and are passed on here. Its registration page, its general guide to voting and its Spanish pages are linked but not passed on. We did not read the Justice Department’s state-by-state guide on voting after a conviction, the Election Assistance Commission’s guides, the Federal Voting Assistance Program’s site, or any state’s election site. What we left out on purpose: the date of any election or deadline (none of the pages we read gives one); every state’s rules; the lists of which states follow which rule after a conviction (vote.gov’s are dated 2024, and a wrong one could get someone prosecuted); voting from jail before a conviction; guardianship; primaries and caucuses beyond one line; and every candidate, party and ballot question. The only phone numbers here are 911 and the Justice Department’s. We called no number. Where the federal pages disagree (which states accept the national mail form), the page says so. This page saves nothing and loads no analytics (privacy); the question builder works in your browser, and nothing you tick is sent anywhere.