On Election Day morning, Markita Kornegay waited to vote in a line that stretched around the block from a side entrance of Miner Elementary School in Washington, D.C. Kornegay knew the drill: She’d voted for President Barack Obama at this polling place before, which was around the same time her son was born. But she wasn’t sure exactly what to expect this morning. She and her family now reside in a shelter for the homeless.
With three young children in tow, Kornegay told a poll worker that she needed to register to vote. She told the volunteer that she still receives her mail where she used to live, at a low-income apartment complex on Benning Road NE, the same address that appears on her driver’s license. But she doesn’t have any form of identification or official mail, not even a utility bill, that lists her current address as the Days Inn on New York Avenue NE—one of a dozen or so motels that the city leases as shelter space for families experiencing homelessness.
