Texas election law allows homeless voters to register. This video doesn’t show anything illegal.

A video of a Dallas County Elections Department training class in Texas is being falsely shared online as evidence of voter fraud.

A Sept. 9 X post with a grammatical and a spelling error said, "Dallas County Texas Tell Election Workers To ILLEGALY LIE ON REGISTRATION & USE A CHURCH ADDRESS TO REGISTER HOMELESS PEOPLE TO VOTE!"

The post was written by John Basham, who the Dallas Morning News reported is a former Reno, Texas, city council member. The "Video Was Recorded August 24th During Election Training By Dallas County Elections Dept.," Basham wrote, linking to an X post with the same video from conservative media personality Joe Hoft. 

Basham’s post had more than 60,000 likes and 2.7 million views by Sept. 11, according to X. We contacted Basham through an X message but received no response.

We found other social media posts sharing the same video and language used in Basham’s post. 

In the 34-second video Basham shared, a woman seated in a classroom setting asked, "So we should just put the church address because that’s where they come?"

Someone off camera responded: "Where do they sleep?" the person asked.

"On the street," the woman responded. "They sleep right outside the church."

"That’s the residence address,"  the person off camera said. "If they sleep in that area, give a description, that’s the residence address. You have to … include a mailing address. If the church has a box that she’s going to share with them, the box is fine. That’s the mailing address."

What the people described is perfectly legal under Texas law.

The Dallas County Elections Department released a Sept. 10 statement in response to what it called "misinformation" in the social media posts.

"These claims falsely imply that legally protected voter registration practices are acts of voter fraud," the statement said. "State law is very clear: having a home is not a requirement to be eligible to register to vote, and voters can use an address other than their residential address as a mailing address."

Dallas County Elections Administrator Heider Garcia said voting eligibility requirements are clearly defined in state law.

"Our unhoused population in Dallas County, many of whom are veterans, deserve to be treated like every other voter who is allowed to use an alternate mailing address," Garcia said in the statement.

The state law that Garcia referred to, which was also cited in a community note on Basham’s post, says in Sec. 13.002 of the election code that a voter application must include the applicant’s residence address, "or, if the residence has no address, the address at which the applicant receives mail and a concise description of the location of the applicant ’s residence."

"The law is crystal clear on this, a person does not lose their right to vote when they experience homelessness," said Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of  Common Cause Texas, a voting rights advocacy group. "Texas law explicitly allows a person experiencing homelessness to use an alternate mailing address."

Featured Fact-check

Progress 2028

stated on October 21, 2024 in a Facebook post

A pro-Kamala Harris website shows she supports a mandatory gun buyback program.

TexasLawHelp.org, an effort by Texas legal aid organizations and foundations, courts, and nonprofits to provide free, reliable legal information to low-income Texans, described on its website how unhoused people can register to vote in the state.

Such voters "can include the address where you sleep most often as the place you ‘reside.’ this can be a shelter address, a park address, or even a street corner." Homeless voters must also provide a valid mailing address. That can be a post office box, or some shelters and nonprofit organizations may allow them to use their addresses to receive mail, the website said.

Texas’ law regarding homeless voters is in line with other states, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless, a national advocacy group for the homeless.

A webpage for the group’s "You Don’t Need a Home to Vote" campaign said, "Many individuals, homeless or otherwise, aren’t even aware that no state requires residents to have a traditional residence in order to vote in elections."

A separate webpage specific to Texas said homeless voters must provide an address where they can receive mail, such as a shelter, service provider or relative, but a residential address can be wherever they usually reside, such as a park or street corner.

An X post said that Dallas County election workers were telling trainees to illegally lie on voter applications and use a church address to register voters.

The Dallas County Election Department called this claim misinformation. It said state law is clear that you don’t need a home to vote, and that voters can use an address other than their residential address as a mailing address. Texas law supports this and is consistent with laws across the country, homeless advocates say. This video didn’t show election workers advising breaking the law; it showed them following it.

We rate the claim Pants on Fire!

PolitiFact Senior Correspondent Amy Sherman and Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this fact-check.