E-Mail This Article to a Friend VOTER REGISTRATION Homeless rule petitioning BY CAMILLE DODERO

Jim Cronin once stole a sheriff's car from the Plymouth County House of Corrections. As a Navy veteran, he'd served time in Walpole for a drunken robbery, and so when he got out in 1965, he recalls, "I was under the impression that I could no longer vote or get a passport. I was a second-class citizen. And I was totally devastated. My self-esteem went right to zero." He ended up in shelters, suffering from alcoholism and agoraphobia. He did "crazy things" like stealing sheriff's vehicles. He earned the nickname "Bay Rum Jim" because he drank Bay Rum Aftershave by the bottle.

But then, in 1975, in the middle of "another legal thing in Lynn," Cronin's lawyer told him he could vote. He'd had no idea. "It blew me away," the 65-year-old says over his case manager's cell phone at the Anchor Inn. "I registered and I experienced an elevation of self-esteem. I'm part of America. I'm connected."

This past December, when State Representative Anthony Petruccelli came to visit the all-male residents of Anchor Inn, the Pine Street Inn's two-year transitional program for substance-abuse recovery, people asked the pol about issues such as affordable-housing legislation. Fred Atkinson, another resident, remembers, "He told us that in most cases, homeless people weren't registered voters and didn't work on their own behalf. And that kind of shocked a bunch of them."

Talk ensued about initiating a voter-registration drive; four guys led the campaign, traveling all over the area to recovery homes and shelters. And everywhere they went, at least 70 percent of the populations signed up. So far, the group has signed up more than 400 voters.

But the foursome realized that they couldn't hit all the shelters in Massachusetts, so they decided to hold one collective voter-registration day — which will take place next Thursday outside the Mary Baker Eddy Library, near the Christian Science Center. "This is a healing thing for me," says Cronin, who's lived at the Anchor Inn for nearly 23 months. "I'm passing power along to people. Up until last December, I had just completed 17 months of psychotherapy. I had four shrinks during that period. I was diagnosed with PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder]. Suddenly somebody mentioned voter registration and I jumped in."

Since then, Cronin has registered voters in alleyways. He's helped enroll constituents in homeless shelters, substance-abuse-recovery houses, and women's inns. Once he even hopped an ER-bound ambulance to help an ailing man finish his enrollment paperwork. "Someone called an ambulance because the guy had chest pains. Then the pains went away, he forgot, and the ambulance pulled up. But we were in the middle of the forms, so I got in and completed them. He was fine."

Is there any partisanship among homeless and low-income people? "They're not very patriotic. They're very angry and resentful and bitter toward the 'haves,'" says Cronin. "Because, after all, they're homeless, and homelessness is shameful. And shame diminishes their self-esteem. It's just a terrible spot to be in." So he's hesitant to say specifically which way they tend to lean politically. "This is very important to the individual who registers to vote internally. What it means in terms of the issues, the candidates — to me, that's secondary."

The Voter Registration Drive by and for Homeless and Low-Income People takes place on Thursday, July 22, from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., at the Christian Science Plaza, 200 Mass Ave, Boston. Call (617) 521-7606.