Above photo: Patty Wetli / WTTW News.
Tuesday’s primary results show more than 40,000 Chicago Democrats declining to select a choice for president.
As voters around the country cast protest votes over President Joe Biden’s support for the Israeli genocide.
Results from the March 19 primary in Chicago show a significant gap between the number of Democratic ballots submitted and the number of votes cast for one of the four listed presidential options.
With 98% of precincts reporting (and the results still unofficial), 297,217 Democrats turned out to vote in the election while only 254,402 voted for any of the presidential candidates listed on the ballot — a gap of 42,815 votes, or 14.4%.
By contrast, in the hotly contested 2016 primary, only 12,687 voters (1.8%) declined to select a presidential option, and in 2012, when President Barack Obama ran uncontested, 24,285 (9%) declined.
President Joe Biden received 227,756 votes and another 11.5% opted for less-popular candidates Dean Phillips (4%), Marianne Williamson (4%) or Frank “Frankie” Lozada (2.5%). Including votes for other candidates, at least a quarter of Chicago’s Democratic voters declined to vote for Biden on Tuesday.
The 14.4% gap appears to include both voters who left the presidential line blank (known as “undervotes”) and write-ins. The Chicago Board of Elections could not be reached for comment.
The vote in Chicago comes as the Uncommitted movement — launched in protest of Biden’s support for the war on Gaza — has gained momentum and spread across the country. It began in the key swing state of Michigan when a short but electric campaign resulted in some 100,000 voters writing in “Uncommitted” on their Democratic presidential ballots. This followed a smaller, but still notable “ceasefire” write-in campaign in New Hampshire.
Organizers and activists in other states have followed suit, including Minnesota, Arizona and Washington, and others have launched campaigns for their upcoming elections including an “uninstructed” campaign in Wisconsin and a “leave it blank” campaign in New York.
“Uncommitted National is so proud of organizers in Chicago for mobilizing support for our anti-war movement,” says Layla Elabed, chair of the Uncommitted National campaign. “Even without an uncommitted or equivalent option on the ballot, Chicago organizers were able to strongly refute Biden’s unrestricted funding of genocide in Gaza.”
Shortly before the vote in Michigan in late February, Elabed, who was then campaign manager for Listen to Michigan, which was organizing the campaign around the Uncommitted vote, told In These Times that “One of the reasons it’s not okay to vote for a different Democratic candidate is because the whole institution of the Democratic Party has really turned on their constituency, has turned on their base.
“Before we can even talk about Biden getting support at the ballot box, the very minimum that the Biden administration would need to do, for us to talk about what support would look like come November, is support a permanent cease-fire and a reevaluation of our policy of unchecked, unconditional military funding to Israel.”
Hatem Abudayyeh, a Palestinian American resident of the Chicago suburbs who organizes in the community, said after seeing the primary results that “there should be no surprise that Palestinians, Arabs, Black people, immigrants, and many others would be rejecting Biden right now.”
“Genocide Joe is responsible for over 30,000 Palestinians killed by Israel since October, and folks want to hold him accountable. This is one way to do it, and the other way is to mobilize for protests at the DNC, which is what USPCN, Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, and dozens of other organizations will be doing in Chicago in August.”