With the 2016 election less than a month away, art-tech startup Meural has created a collaborative effort of photographers around America collecting portraits and stories of political leanings. The Daily Beast has an exclusive peek inside the series Battleground, which will be available to the public Oct. 18.
Here, a voter in North Carolina:
“I want to vote for someone who does not see me as transgender or a man in a dress, I want to vote for someone that sees me as a citizen of the United States and as a North Carolinian. Hillary Clinton understands that I am an equal member of this society.” — Candis Cox, educator, lecturer, and advocate for the LGBTQ community, Raleigh, North Carolina
“You know, I don’t like Donald Trump, but I’m going to vote for him. I feel like at least he’s going to get in there and rattle the cages a bit. Because some of those ol’ boys have been in those cages for too long.” — Rodger Slings, 63, farmer, Prairie City, Iowa
“Detroit is a bellwhether for the whole country, as far as our experience heading into the center post-industrial tornado before anyone else. To that degree, Detroit’s vote is important because Detroit is, in a positive sense, the testing ground for what happens to a city that has experienced industrial decline and what is next on the agenda for us.” — Marsha, writer, Detroit
Courtesy Nick Hagen via Meural
“I’m not going to vote for Trump… and I don’t really want to vote for Clinton, but I’m going to. While I believe Trump might be more likely to protect the Second Amendment, I believe Hillary is more equipped to protect the Constitution's First Amendment. Since the clauses of the First Amendment are the cornerstone by which all of the other amendments are conceived and arranged, Madame Secretary Clinton shall receive my vote.” — Zack Bonnie, 42, writer, Dyke, Virginia
“I’m voting Libertarian, I voted Libertarian in the governor’s race, last election race, and I will continue to do so. Basically my important issue is protecting people who can’t protect themselves. I think the best way to do that is with have a strong Constitution and I don’t see anybody else who even respects it”. — Rebecca Danis, educational trainer, Dyke, Virginia
“The political climate has changed. The political cynicism that exists right now has just obscured our American values of welcoming the stranger, of trying to live up to what we mean when we say ‘Bring me your tired, your poor, your sick, your hungry.’ At a time when there are refugee camps all over the world, where there’s violence in Central America, and where there’s economic devastation in Mexico—often times thanks to our first-world economic policies—people are coming and we’re thinking of building walls and limiting the number of refugees? Trump says he wants to make America great again, but I think we need to make America good again. And being good goes back the core values and the principles of who we are.” — Rev. Adan Mairena, Philadelphia
Charles Mostoller via Meural
"Oh girl—I’m with her! But for local elections, I’ve switched a few times. I’m actually pretty progressive, but here in Key West, the Republicans are progressive. Financially conservative maybe, but it’s so liberal here that even Republicans have had to adjust. There’s a congresswoman—Ileana Ros-Lehtinen—she’s been doing it for years. She keeps getting re-elected—she comes to gay events, to all the social events….” — Kylie, performer, 801 Bourbon Bar, Key West, Florida
Courtesy Georgina Richardson via Meural
“Mr. Trump wasn’t my first choice, but if I’m going to choose between a woman who allowed Americans to die in Benghazi while she was beauty sleeping, deleted classified emails, uses race-baiting tactics to win voters, has accomplished nothing in her time as secretary of State, and is the wife of the only president to lie under oath, over an anti-establishment genius who built a multibillion-dollar real-estate empire and has actually created jobs, I’d have to be pretty damn clueless.” — Colton Robinson, 21, photographer in Las Vegas
“It’s a civic duty to vote. This should be taught in school and emphasized. The people should know about their government and vote. They should know about politics... understand the issues. People are not talking about issues. It’s about personalities. I’ve never seen where both candidates are disliked by the people. You’re not voting for anybody but you’re voting against somebody.” — Marilyn Johnson, retired, Bernie Sanders supporter, Bethlehem, New Hampshire
Courtesy John Tully via Meural
“A friend of mine who is a member of a motorcycle organization called me and said he had an extra ticket to the Hannity/Trump rally down at the Pabst Theater. He said they’re front-row seats and I gotta go. We had to wait three hours to get in... but Hannity came out and warmed up the crowd. Then it was pretty cool when Donald came out with his wife, I mean you see him on TV, but to see him in person walk out with his wife…. His wife is a knockout, you know, and they come out, you see them on camera and off camera—off-camera he’s talking to the crowd like he’s talking to a guy in a bar, you know, he’s a regular guy. And that’s what warmed me up to him. ’Cause to me he was so real, he wasn’t worried about being politically correct, he said what think he felt from his heart, you know.” — Jim Mead, 66, retired, Milwaukee
“She [Hillary] is, for the people…. And Trump, he is just for himself.... If he was American, he would be with the people. That’s what America is, ‘WE THE PEOPLE.’ It doesn’t say what race, it doesn’t say what gender. Nothing! WE should be as one. And he talks about himself, and him doing things alone.” — D Rojas, Minneapolis Minnesota
Courtesy Alison Malone via Meural
“I think the real way to make America great again would be to bring back family values... which sadly aren’t well represented this November.” — Michael Gibson, 28, self-described “red-blooded American, Budweiser-chuggin’ badASS”
Courtesy Amy Gibson via Meural
