Bus to November

Somewhere along Interstate 79 as it cuts down the length of West Virginia, a billboard implores passersby: “Vote like your job depends on it.” It’s a message that more than 40 percent of the American electorate routinely ignores.

We pulled into the Los Angeles Greyhound terminal in the early evening two weeks after we departed Philadelphia, the end of a trip that led us past that billboard soon after our departure and into the lives of our fellow passengers. We met auto mechanics and artists, immigrants with documents and without, farmers and felons. We asked what would lead them to vote for Democrat Hillary Clinton, Republican Donald Trump or not at all. A few had followed the campaigns closely. Others couldn’t name the nominees.

Over 3,041 miles and 11 states, in 15 buses piloted by 17 drivers, we traversed fault lines: the Ramapo in the Northeast, the Wasatch in Utah and the San Andreas in California. The most pronounced fault line was intangible: between those participating in democracy and those who wouldn’t.

Discontent is universal, just as polls have been showing for months. Still, even if doubt lingered, even if they hated both candidates, even if they thought nothing would change, most of the more than 100 people we interviewed at length saw choosing President Barack Obama’s successor as their duty. We came to see voting in 2016 as an act of bravery in the face of despair.

“That’s your given right,” said John Wilkinson, a 59-year-old carpenter we met aboard our bus to Denver. “Our one time every few years to have our say.”

Joe Tassarotti, a doctoral student en route to Pittsburgh, said he’d vote for Clinton, but only so Trump wouldn’t win, and only because he lives in the swing state of Pennsylvania.

Trump “doesn’t quite know what he’s doing, but that’s still better,” said Craig Anderson, a Republican and owner of a garden center in Richfield, Utah, who supported Ted Cruz early on. “We’ll vote against Hillary.”

Dave Grossman, a Clinton voter from Colorado who first supported socialist Bernie Sanders, said, “We don't need incremental change, we need wholesale revolution—but I’m worried it’s going to come at the jackboot of Trump.”

The vending machines are out of order.

The bus to Kansas City is running late or is it canceled altogether? Why? Hard to say, because there’s no information board and no announcements.

What happens if we miss our connection?

Travel by bus and it’s easy to feel invisible and powerless.

Each day we rode for hours, most often on early morning buses whose passengers were in various states of wakefulness. Some had slept in the station; others merely had attempted to during the overnight ride that deposited them. The vehicles were often crowded, dirty and hot.

We met plenty of people who felt ignored by society, or chose to ignore it. Instead of viewing an election as an equalizer—after all, a ballot counts once, regardless of the voter’s bank account—they told us their vote doesn’t ever matter.

Mark Bowser, 25, a part-time Florida crabber whom we met on his way to a Colorado hippie festival, has been transient eight months of the year for the past half-decade. He avoids interaction with government. Adam Borth, 26, unemployed and moving from Ohio to Texas, said the powerful had already decided whom to put in the Oval Office.

For others, the fault line between voting and not voting was more tenuous.

Rick Christensen, a two-time Obama voter, said the more he reads the news, the more irritated he gets. And as the manager of a bar and theater in Grand Junction, Colorado, he sees the hostility play out nightly.

"It separates the people who sit next to one another," he said. "People want to fight at the end of the night because one wants Trump and one wants Hillary."

"I would probably miss the polls" if the election were tomorrow, he said. "I'll probably watch the debates and go from there."

Each place and story possessed complexity and nuance that data fail to capture.

We passed a Somali woman on the side of a Nebraska prairie road wearing a black niqab, no part of her visible but the eyes, part of a refugee community that's settled there to work at a meat-processing plant. A few minutes later, we sat on barstools listening to white male retirees. In one breath, they blamed her people for dividing their community. In the next they said they would under no circumstances vote for Trump, because he would take discrimination against Muslims too far.

There was Wilkinson, the carpenter from Maine whom we met shortly after he’d sought a fresh start in Colorado. The Army veteran voted for Republican John McCain in 2008 and in his native state had supported Republican Governor Paul LePage. Never mind that LePage has made a national name as a north country Trump—Wilkinson wanted Clinton in the White House.

“The lower class, the middle class—I don’t think he respects us enough to help us,” Wilkinson said of Trump.

There was Jason Carpenter, an ex-heroin addict from Kentucky on his way to work on a South Dakota oil rig. He fit perfectly the stereotype of a Trump voter: white, from a depressed state, without a college degree. The long hours on the bus allowed us to probe beyond his demographic caricature. He saw Trump's plan to build a wall along the southern U.S. border as a last chance to choke off the flow of drugs that are ravaging his state and thereby push prices out of reach. His logic was linear and sincere.

And there was Jermaine Cook, a 43-year-old black New Orleans native with gold teeth. He also planned to vote for Trump.

“I’m scared of my kids living the life that they shouldn't have to live—fear," said Cook, who was traveling from Oklahoma to see his mother in Des Moines, Iowa. “Somebody could blow this bus up right now at this bus station. ... You know how they take airplanes?”

Who’s they?

“Terrorists, people who dislike Americans, for what reason I don't know,” he said. “There ain’t nothing wrong with helping somebody [if] they come to America right. ... When they come here the wrong way you’re letting in terrorists, murderers, rapists. You letting all them in. ... When they come in the right way you’re bringing dads ... people who welcome, who want to be better, people who want to make America better.”

On a bus, crankiness dissipates as morning wears on, earbuds emerge from ears and people open up.

“Where you headed? Oh yeah, Omaha? Is that home? I have a cousin who used to live there.”

Sandwiches, granola bars and Newport Lights are shared.

As we set out from Philadelphia, Anne Svensson, a white single mother on government assistance, was headed home to Pittsburgh. As she told us of her troubles trying to find full-time work, the black woman next to her interrupted.

“Have you heard of AmeriCorps?” asked Brigette Ways, who launched into an explanation of how the federal program could offer her on-the-job training and a stipend.

Svensson's 5-month-old daughter began to cry, and Ways soothed the child in her arms as Svensson made up a bottle.

Everyone is traveling on the same bus.