Chicago

There are the undecided, the decided and those who electorally do not exist, the so-called abstentionists - even if the term is incorrect because it presupposes a desire not to vote -, in the United States they are a third of those entitled to vote. It is true that many are not interested in politics, but a good portion do not even know they have the right to vote or do not know how to register. This is yet another contradiction of American democracy.

In the so-called swing states, the parties are taking action to send volunteers door to door who have the task of explaining the right to vote, convincing and helping those who are not registered to do so. In states like Michigan or Wisconsin, where the two candidates are neck and neck, Republicans and Democrats have for weeks been unleashing young volunteers who, like Jehovah's Witnesses, engage in political proselytism. In many cases on election day, the 'converts' are accompanied to the polls by highly efficient couriers. All this does not happen in states where the electorate traditionally votes for one party or another. For example, in Montana or Texas, Republican strongholds, or in Illinois or New York, traditionally Democratic states. In these states, no party is interested in potential abstentionists.

In a small city park in Chicago, north of the Millennium Park, a group of black men are talking while sitting on some benches. They are not homeless, but they are not well off either, given the time, early afternoon, one can assume that some are unemployed. And in fact the youngest tell me that they are, they lost their jobs when the small family-run factory where they worked went bankrupt. It produced cheap gifts and with Covid, despite the checks from the state, it had to close. The older ones have not worked for a long time and live on the National Security check, which most likely does not even reach a thousand dollars a month.

They talk about sports, their true and only passion. Not far away, high school students practice American football, others shoot hoops on a basketball court. In fact, sports are omnipresent in America and in the world. Politics does not interest them because neither party knows what it is. When I ask them if party volunteers have shown up to get them to vote, they shake their heads. When you think about it, why would they do that? The victory of the Democrats in the state of Illinois is so certain that getting a few more votes is irrelevant, for the Republicans it is useless to even try to win in Illinois because the gap is too big.

Even in the 2024 presidential elections, in Chicago as in New York we already know who will win in these states, they have always been blue. But while in the Bronx I met people, small businessmen, teachers and retirees who admitted to having moved from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party after Covid and to wanting to vote for Trump even knowing that he will never win in the state of New York, here in Chicago I am told that voting is useless.

The problem with an electoral system based on the electoral colleges and a nation that is highly polarized and where inequalities have assumed worrying dimensions, is the indifference of the electoral and political machine towards those segments of the population, people that have no electoral power, precisely because of the electoral system, e.g. the group of blacks I met in Chicago and the shop owners in  the Bronx. This is very wrong because one of the pillars of democracy is representation.

On the very elegant Michigan Avenue, at the entrance to the cloister of an old church, the homeless, another segment that does not vote, enter and exit from a side entrance. It is lunchtime and the parish offers them a hot meal. Some are mentally disturbed, most likely many are victims of the opioid crisis, others have recently fallen into poverty, you can tell by the clothes they wear, the backpacks they have on their shoulders but also the shame that can still be read on their faces. None of them votes. They have no fixed home and socially they do not exist.

On the sidewalk in front of the church appears a wheelchair with a man without a leg, in its place an iron calf and a fake foot. He is a veteran of the war in Iraq. The state gave him the prosthesis. He lost his house and his family in the divorce. Once, he tells me, I voted, now I don’t because for the state I no longer exist.

Among the non-voters there are also those who have a green card, illegal immigrants who are authorized to work but who do not even have the right to a green card, and the whole nebula of illegal immigrants who hide from the state and feed the black market. They live in America but do not have the right to vote.

In a wellness centre I meet a Ukrainian entrepreneur, she tells me that she has been in Chicago for two years and has managed to open a business that is successful. she left her entire family in a town in western Ukraine, including her mother and father. She escaped with her partner, but he was unable to cross the border by train, men are forbidden to leave the country. He had to leave illegally and then he arrived in Chicago from Poland a year after her. This thirty-year-old women with delicate features would vote for Trump, she tells me, she would if she could because she wants an end the war and wants to go home. Even though she has become part of the American dream, she doesn't want to stay in this country. It's all a business, she tells me, the war in Ukraine is a dirty business and it has destroyed our nation. Zelensky, he adds, is one of the promoters.

Chicago 10/11 October