At an Oak Park shelter, Roberta Calderón registers to vote for the first time. (WBEZ/Chip Mitchell)

Political parties and interest groups across the country are working
overtime to register voters for November’s election. That goes even for
Illinois, where polls suggest U.S. Senator Barack Obama is ahead by a
wide margin. A voter-registration drive in Cook County is targeting a
segment of the electorate that usually gets little attention from
candidates. These potential voters are homeless. We report from our
West Side bureau.

50-year-old Roberta Calderón finishes her spaghetti dinner at First
United Methodist, one of several churches in west suburban Oak Park
that take turns sheltering the homeless. Calderón finds a foam mattress
in the church’s chapel, where she’ll sleep for the night.

Then she breaks from her routine. She heads for a table where a woman
is signing people up to cast a ballot in the November 4 election.

DEPUTY REGISTRAR: Were you registered to vote at any other address prior to this?
CALDERON: I’ve never registered.
DEPUTY REGISTRAR: This is the first time you’ve registered?
CALDERON: This is the first time I’m going to vote.

Calderón says she and her husband have been homeless, off and on, since
a local phone company laid him off in 2000. She says they now both work
odd jobs . . .

CALDERON: But not enough where we can keep an apartment. We rent a
room, maybe 2 or 3 weeks, then we’re back on the street, back to the
shelter again.

Calderón won’t say which presidential candidate will get her vote, only that she’s counting on him to help working people.

CALDERON: There are so many homeless people right now because of what’s going on. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

But influencing policy isn’t the only reason she wants to vote.

CALDERON: You feel like you’re doing something, you’re sticking with your community, you’re sticking with the USA.

A 1992 law made Illinois the first state to allow homeless people to
register to vote using the address of a church or any other place they
frequent. Since then, election officials in several Illinois counties
have helped homeless service providers register voters.

But none have done it on the scale that Cook County Clerk David Orr
has. His office has partnered with the Chicago Coalition for the
Homeless to recruit people who work at shelters, soup kitchens and
transitional housing programs. Orr led a training session this month
that turned them into deputy registrars.

ORR: I was actually shocked. I thought there would be a handful of
people that wanted to get trained, and it was roomful of people.

Fifty-seven, Orr’s office says.

The coalition’s director, Ed Shurna, says these registrars are now
reaching homeless people at dozens of sites across Cook County.

SHURNA: If you pull all those votes together, they could number in the
thousands. And, if people are concerned about housing, if people are
concerned about jobs, they’re going to be looking at what the
candidates say about housing and jobs.

Cook County’s effort to register homeless voters is not pleasing
everyone. A statement from the Illinois Republican Party says, while
all citizens have the right to vote, the homeless initiative could
invite fraud.

ambi: Registration table.

At the Oak Park shelter, Sherri Hackett has registered eight voters
tonight. As their address, many are listing Hackett’s employer, a local
homeless service provider called West Suburban PADS. If any of these
voters are challenged, she may have to vouch for them.

Hackett says she’ll keep signing up the homeless to vote right up until
the registration deadline. She says it’s a question of empowering them.

HACKETT: When you’re homeless, it’s very isolating. If they, quote
unquote, appear homeless, have a lot of bags and they have to move from
place to place, I would hope that registering them to vote makes them
feel less isolated.

The deadline to mail in Illinois voter registration forms is October 7.

I’m Chip Mitchell, Chicago Public Radio.