Chicago has a really traditional, conventional type of government. It doesn’t have a traditional style of politics. The Chicago government is incredibly inefficient and very critical to the lives of citizens. The city is in debt, public transportation budgets are getting cut, and Chicago needs to enhance its security needs, but the government can’t figure out how to do it all.
The citizens of Chicago have lately blamed many of their problems on Mayor Brandon Johnson, who won the 2023 mayoral election with 52.2% of the vote over his opponent Paul Vallas. When looking at these numbers, it seems like a slim margin, proving the differing opinions of Chicagoans. However, what is concerning to me is that roughly 65 percent of registered Chicago voters ended up voting.
Chicagoans chose not to vote, which means not using their voices. Since most Chicago voters share similar liberal political views and since both candidates were liberals, they assumed that they had the exact same ideas. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
Sharing a political party with a candidate doesn’t mean that you agree on every issue. It is obvious, especially between Paul Vallas and Brandon Johnson, that two people of the same political party can disagree on many issues. One key issue they disagreed on was education and the use of the Chicago Department of Education. Johnson proposes to overhaul the education system and come up with a blanket new one to help completely restructure the education system in Chicago. Vallas proposes giving more power to principals and ensuring that specific schools have their own needs fulfilled. Vallas and Johnson also have very different beliefs on what Chicago can and should be. Vallas believes that Chicago has problems and needs them to be fixed, while Johnson believes the problems are more systemic.
Voters just favor voting easily: voting based on the ads they have received on their TVs or what their neighbors have told them to vote for, not researching the candidates themselves. It is imperative to a democracy that the people understand who or what they are voting for.
The City of Chicago is at a key point in its history. We have a mayor with record-low approval ratings, tons of construction causing inconveniences for the citizens, and cuts to public transportation. Just over 30% of students in CPS read at grade level, and 18.3% are proficient in math. All of these are pressing issues and need to be fixed.
There have been good things that have happened to Chicago recently: the 2025 fiscal budget was net neutral, the deficit is going down, and murders have decreased roughly 40%, a huge amount! There are good things that the government has addressed, but there are so many other issues that need fixing.
Many voters of Chicago are angry and want these issues to be fixed. We like to blame the problems on the mayor, but we elected him, and we like to blame the history of Chicago politics, but there are easy ways to fix these issues. Chicago needs to find new leadership that will find the solutions.
The biggest way for change is for all registered voters to vote and have citizens see the power of their vote. Since so few Chicago citizens end up voting, that makes the people who do vote have so much more power in what happens.
