Live Updates: Elections 2020 In Illinois

Not every polling location in Chicago was buzzing with voters this morning. In Gage Park on the Southwest Side, there were polling places at two schools around the corner from each other. Both were nearly vacant.

The neighborhood is home to some of the highest COVID-19 rates in the city and to essential employees who can’t work from home. About a 15-minute drive north, Charles Hammond Elementary School in Little Village also saw a trickle of voters.

Farther north at the UIC Dorin Forum, on a busy corner in Little Italy, only 35 people had cast ballots by 11 a.m. Nia Cunningham, 18, is a freshman at the University of Illinois in Chicago who cast her ballot early, but worked the polls at the Forum to make a little extra cash.

“Our political climate right now is very bad,” Cunningham said. “And as an African American female I want to make sure I’m represented.”

She said she wants the systemic racism across the U.S. addressed. “The oppression, the negativity, the list goes on,” Cunningham said.

She’s majoring in public health.

“I just want everybody to learn how to help people and try to do it from the heart instead of from their pocket,” Cunningham said.

She was on her way to her dorm to pick up her computer to do school work because, with fewer students on campus due to the pandemic, the polling place was slow.