What presidential campaign? The Electoral College puts most American voters on the sidelines

WAUKEGAN, Ill. — On a table at the office of the Waukegan Township Democrats sits a box of postcards with Wisconsin addresses that were collected during a postcard-writing pizza party to help turn out voters there. Leaning against the table are homemade Harris-Walz signs.

“We know they’re handing these out everywhere in Wisconsin,” said Matt Muchowski, chair of the Democratic club. “Here in Waukegan, it’s been harder to get a hold of Harris yard signs, so we’re printing out our own.”

One reason they’ve been in short supply: Waukegan is in Illinois, which is not a presidential swing state. It just sits across the border from one.

Muchowski said this is emblematic of the limited attention cities outside of swing states receive from presidential campaigns. The United States’ unique Electoral College system, which replaces the popular vote, puts disproportionate voting power in the hands of a relative few states that are evenly divided politically and ensures that the majority of campaign dollars — and attention from the presidential candidates — goes to those states.

The lack of attention leaves voters in much of the country feeling as if they and the issues they care about have been sidelined. It’s a dividing line that is felt acutely in places such as Waukegan, one of Chicago’s farthest-flung suburbs.

The last time a presidential candidate set foot in the working class, majority Latino city was when former President Donald Trump landed at its airport in 2020. Trump walked off Air Force One, gave a single wave, and then immediately climbed into an SUV headed across the border to Kenosha, Wisconsin.

In Racine, a Wisconsin city of a similar size just 50 miles north of Waukegan, Trump hosted a rally in June near a harbor overlooking Lake Michigan, where he gushed about the development along the lakeshore, spoke about revitalization efforts in Racine and the Milwaukee metropolitan area, and emphasized their voters’ importance in his attempt to return to the White House.

Just a month earlier, before he dropped out of the race, President Joe Biden lauded a new Microsoft center in Racine County during a campaign stop in the city. The city just south of Milwaukee has become a common stomping ground for presidential hopefuls as Wisconsin, one of just seven battleground states likely to determine this year’s presidential race, remains heavily targeted by the campaigns of Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.

Cities such as Waukegan become “lost in the national conversation” during presidential elections, said Muchowski, who has lived in the area most of his life.

“It’s not so much the candidates as it is the anti-democratic Electoral College,” he said. “… It’s frustrating that certain voters’ votes count for more, and they discount and discredit the votes of more urban, more people of color voters.”

Illinois is a reliably Democratic state — it hasn’t voted for a Republican presidential candidate since George H.W. Bush in 1988. That predictability is reflected in the presidential campaigns every four years.

Except for fundraisers, the Republican and Democratic presidential tickets have been to Illinois just twice this year — once for an appearance by Trump before a group representing Black journalists and once by Harris when she came to Chicago for her party’s national convention. By comparison, they had visited Wisconsin 27 times through Tuesday, including when Biden was the presumptive nominee.

This year’s presidential battleground states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — represent 18% of the country’s population but have dominated the attention of the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates and their running mates.

Through Tuesday, they have had just over 200 total campaign stops — three-quarters of which have been to those seven states, according to a database of campaign events that is based on Associated Press reporting. Pennsylvania alone has been visited 41 times, the most of any state.

But it’s not just the state visits: The presidential campaigns are tailoring their appearances to specific counties they believe are crucial to their success. The AP’s database shows their campaign events in the seven battleground states have been concentrated in counties with 22.7 million registered voters — just 10% of all voters registered nationally for this year’s presidential election.

Many residents of Waukegan wish it also could get on the candidates’ radar. They said they’re proud of how multiculturalism has shaped their city, a place where almost 60% of residents are Latino and more than 16% are Black, according to 2020 U.S. Census data.

The working class community was largely built on factory jobs that once offered residents a comfortable, middle class life. But after companies abandoned the city’s lakefront, starting in the 1960s, tens of thousands of jobs disappeared.

Waukegan never fully recovered.

Its poverty and unemployment rates rise well above the state and national averages. Its school district is one of the worst-funded in the county, struggles with understaffing and has dismal graduation rates. And its lakeshore is a sagging reminder of the city’s heyday: An asbestos manufacturing plant, a coal plant and a gypsum factory all sit silent beside public beaches. Beside them are a crisscrossed network of abandoned railroad tracks.

The industries brought with them another problem — a legacy of environmental damage. The city of around 86,000 residents has five federal Superfund sites. In 2019, the state’s pollution control board ruled that Waukegan’s coal plant violated environmental regulations and contaminated groundwater, and it was shuttered three years later.

The scene in Waukegan contrasts with Racine’s pristine lakefront marina, where luxury condos flank coffee shops, restaurants and hotels.

Thomas Maillard, the Democratic State Central Committeeman for Illinois’ 10th Congressional District and a lifelong Lake County resident, said the contrast between the two cities is clear. In Waukegan, he said he worries about gun violence and access to well-paying jobs, affordable housing, child care and health care.

“The history of Waukegan, unfortunately, is the history of this country’s neglect of those Rust Belt communities, especially along the Great Lakes,” he said. “… People are struggling.”

Maillard pointed to the Electoral College system as a culprit, calling it “a system of potential neglect.”

Sam Cunningham, a former mayor of Waukegan, said people feel forgotten in the city that he’s called home since elementary school. It’s clear, he said, that the national agenda prioritizes some states over others.

“They’re probably thinking, ‘Why should we put money over here when we need it in these battleground states?’” he said. “I understand the logic, but understand how we feel. Do we feel slighted? Of course we do. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.”

Margaret Padilla Carrasco, who has lived in the Waukegan area her entire life, drove to Milwaukee in August to see Harris speak. If Harris were to visit Waukegan, Carrasco said she would take her to the deteriorating houses on the south side of the city, to assisted living facilities where senior citizens are struggling to pay their bills and to a homeless shelter near her home.

Her message to Harris, she said, is to not count on their votes. Saddled with job losses and a rising cost of living, people in Waukegan are frustrated, she said. While she still plans to vote for Harris, Carrasco hears of more and more Waukegan voters pulling away from the Democratic Party, which has long won the lion’s share of the city’s votes.

“If you don’t spend the time with us, then don’t expect us to vote for you,” said Carrasco, 65, who trains young Latinas in Waukegan to ride horses in traditional Mexican Charro style. “You need to hear us. You need to talk to us.”

James Richard Wynn, a 35-year-old father of nine, said he feels doubly forgotten in Waukegan as a conservative in the predominantly Democratic city. He said he and the issues he cares most about — homeschooling, abortion restrictions, Second Amendment rights and government spending — often go ignored by presidential candidates.

“There is probably a mindset amongst a lot of conservatives, especially in Illinois, who think there’s no point in saying anything,” he said.

Despite limited political attention, several residents praised what they described as Waukegan’s do-it-yourself spirit, which often translates into grassroots political organizing around issues such as housing and environmental justice.

On a sunny Tuesday recently, Pastor Julie Contreras, who helps support recent immigrants in the city, had a long to-do list. She was gathering community members to rebuild the roof for an undocumented couple whose house was damaged in a storm. Then she had to collect diaper donations for a woman who had just given birth.

This is the Waukegan most people don’t see, said Contreras, an advocate with the local nonprofit United Giving Hope. She chastised candidates for just dropping in to the city’s airport before they head to Wisconsin without engaging with the voters there about their struggles.

“They’re missing out on a wonderful community right here,” she said.

Muchowski, of the Waukegan Township Democrats, said when the city feels ignored, its residents take care of each other. It’s something they’ve gotten used to, he said.

“Waukegan, for a lot of people, is a city of grit and imagination,” Muchowski said. “I don’t know a lot of people who are like, ‘I want to move across the country to Waukegan.’ But the people that come here really see the potential.”

If only, he said, candidates would see the potential, too.

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Associated Press multimedia journalist Kevin S. Vineys in Washington contributed to this report.

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