“To me, life is about change, not for the worse but for the better,” said Billy Taylor, 56. “That’s making my life worse.”

An Army veteran, Taylor has been homeless for the past 20 years while struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder and an alcohol problem. But he said he’s voted in every election since he was old enough to cast a ballot.

Taylor picks up his mail across the street from the Georgia Capitol at the Central Presbyterian Church’s Outreach and Advocacy Center, where about 2,300 voters who are likely homeless receive their election mail.

This year, Taylor said he voted for Donald Trump, but for Taylor and the thousands of voters who receive their election mail from the nonprofit, the SB 189 provision would make it more arduous to participate in elections.

Voters registered at the Central Outreach and Advocacy Center will soon have to travel 20 miles to Fulton County’s Election Hub to receive absentee ballots and other election-related mail notifying them of things such as polling location changes or challenges to their voter registration.

There are about 10,000 voters across the state who registered with a homeless services provider as their mailing address, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis of the state’s voter roll. This number includes those registered at large shelters, churches and food banks, but there are hundreds more unhoused voters at smaller locations scattered throughout Georgia.

State Sen. Max Burns, who sponsored SB 189, told the AJC that under the new law, a homeless voter can still fill out their registration address at a street corner or other nonresidential address, but it would not be considered a residence “in the traditional sense.” In such cases, all election mail would be directed to their county election office, he said.

Burns, a Republican from Sylvania, said the intention of the provision was to “ensure that every voter who was homeless received their absentee ballot.”

But the CEO of the Democratic voting rights organization Fair Fight Action, Lauren Groh-Wargo, said lawmakers were motivated by politics rather than concerns over election mail.

“This was an intentional community they saw as powerless and unsavory to further the myth of voter fraud and create suspicion around the electorate and try to shave their margins in a way that, in close elections, could matter,” Groh-Wargo said.

Georgia will be the only state that requires homeless voters to receive election-related mail at a specific location, such as an election office, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless.

The law targets a small number of Georgia voters. In the past three presidential elections, about 1,100 of these voters found in the AJC’s analysis cast a ballot. In the most recent presidential election, at least 540 homeless people voted. In elections from 2016 to 2020, about 500 of these voters participated statewide each year.

About two-thirds of voters registered to receive mail at homeless service providers are Black, a disproportionately large share since about one-third of all registered voters are Black.

SB 189 is the latest in a slew of election overhaul bills passed in the wake of Joe Biden’s narrow 2020 election victory over Trump. Like many of those laws, it’s also being challenged in federal court.

The Georgia NAACP and Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda filed a lawsuit in September seeking to overturn provisions of SB 189 they claim discriminate against people who are homeless; voters registered at nonresidential addresses, such as a post office box or college dorm; and voters who are registered at military bases.

The lawsuit was grouped together in November with two others challenging the law. That combined lawsuit is still pending.

The latest complaint, filed Tuesday, argues the law singles out voters who are homeless, in part because other voters can use a P.O. box or a business address to receive their mail

“SB 189 compounds the threat of disenfranchisement to unhoused and housing-insecure voters — who are already among the most vulnerable and marginalized groups of voters — by forcing them to receive their official election mail … at their county registrar’s office rather than at their preferred address, even as all other Georgia voters are permitted to do so,” the lawsuit states.

The filing also said the new requirement is burdensome to homeless people who are further than walking distance from county election offices and cannot get transportation.

How are counties preparing?

The change won’t meaningfully disrupt election office operations for most Georgia counties. That could be a different story for the state’s most populous counties, such as Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton and Gwinnett, which have large homeless populations and won’t have the same capacity to operate as a mail room like a post office would.

Cobb, Fulton and Gwinnett county election directors said they have yet to carve out comprehensive plans for what to do with the election mail offices will soon receive. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is expected to issue guidance on how to navigate the change, said Mike Hassinger, a spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office.

In Gwinnett, a problem that may arise is the amount of mail the county receives during elections. Gwinnett Elections Director Zach Manifold said separating mail for individual voters from the office’s regular mail could create problems for the county.

“The biggest issue that we saw was trying to figure out how to even separate it from the large amount of mail that we get that just bounces back to us,” Manifold said.

As election officials and homeless voters navigate the new change, lawmakers under the Gold Dome are expected to push for additional election laws when the General Assembly convenes in January.

Staff writer Mark Niesse contributed to this article.

How we got the story

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s unique analysis looked at the mailing addresses of all registered voters in the state and the residence address for those who did not list a mailing address.

The AJC analyzed addresses in the state where 40 or more registered voters receive mail. Reporters manually mapped each address to determine whether it is a homeless service provider. The final list of addresses includes locations where homeless voters or those without permanent housing may register, such as churches, homeless shelters and food banks.

Voters receiving mail at motels and extended-stay hotels were not included.

This list of large providers was used to estimate how many voters participated in past elections. Since there are hundreds more voters registered to receive mail at smaller providers, the number of affected voters is likely higher.