The system is BROKEN.

Something is very wrong here. Chicago just had it's first real, open Mayor election in 22 years, but that's not what makes this year historical at all. The historical fact is that the election had a 42% turnout. 42% of the eligible voters in the city of Chicago voted. That makes me angry. I mean really angry, and what doesn't help is that the Chicago Tribune reports the tournout as "underwhelming", the Daily Northwestern calls it "disappointing", the Sun-Times didn't call it anything; and all in stories that are like fourth or fifth in the order of importance on their sites. I had to search for the effing things to even find them. They're too busy covering the glad-handing and back patting these elected officials are giving each other; none of whom give two shits about who didn't vote and why. 

So why aren't people voting? Well, if you look at the "newspapers" I linked to, they blame voter fatigue and go on about some nonsense of voters being tired of ads and robocalls and back to back campaign seasons and blah blah blah. Did they ask any of the voters why they felt the need to vote? Did they ask any of the people who voted why they didn't vote? No. Because what's happening now is working for the newspapers, they get circulation based on providing blaise stories about whether someone is a resident or not; they don't need you to vote, in fact it's probably better if you don't because then they can run the elections. The people getting elected don't care if you vote, in fact they probably would rather get elected by the fanatic minority who votes for them because they're little lap dogs who'll come out and keep coming out to vote. It's working for those who are already in the system for the same reasons. It's working for a select few people and if it's working for them then it really isn't "broken", is it? There's really no reason to look into it. 

No one wants to face the truth on this; something is broken. Something in or about our political system is broken and if we don't fix it those numbers are going to keep going down. In the last "open" mayoral election the turnout was 68%. What has changed? I don't know what it is, nor do I expect you to know what it is because no one is asking the damn questions. "Fuck people who don't vote, it's their own problem", "If you don't vote then you don't have a voice and who cares what you think anyway". Well I say this is bullshit. We need to figure out what is going on and fix this. It is our responsibillity to figure this out. It is our elected officials responsibility to figure this out. It is our medias responsibility to figure this out.

Let's turn these numbers around. 58% of people don't give a flying fuck who the hell the mayor is. 58%. To me that says 58% of the registered voters think that all of the candidates are douchebags and unworthy of being elected. I know it's not as simple and clear-cut as that, but if there were a "None of the Above" checkbox on the ballot and 58% of people checked that, then this would be an entirely different day. 55% of 42% is 321,773 people (from suntimes.com) in a city of 2,896,016 million people, 11% decided who the mayor is going to be. ELEVEN PERCENT. If that doesn't tell you that something is wrong then I don't know what would. 

Cheers.