Joel Pilkage kept putting off the interview, so I finally burst into his store in Chillicothe, Ohio, pointed a gun at his groin and forced him to answer my questions.
For months, Pilkage, a 46-year-old used-office-furniture-store owner, has been besieged by pollsters trying to ascertain his views one the presidential election. But his views are maddeningly vague.
He is America’s last undecided voter.
“I don’t know,” he said. “The candidates are both so sure of themselves. It puts me off a little. And I don’t follow the news, so I’m kind of stuck.”
Pilkage begins every thought he utters with “I don’t know.” We have edited out most of them to keep readers from wanting to kill him.
He says he voted for Donald Trump in 2020 and Hillary Clinton in 2016.
“I went into the voting booth and flipped a coin,” he says. “I don’t know, I needed more time, but all of a sudden, it was Election Day and I still hadn’t decided.”
Pilkage admits his difficulty in making choices is not confined to politics.
“I go hungry a lot because I can’t decide whether to cook or eat out,” he said. “And it takes me forever to get dressed. Sometimes I don’t get to the store until three in the afternoon.”
As you might expect, Pilkington is not married. But he has been engaged to Dana Bledsoe, an accountant who also lives in Chillicothe, for 28 years.
“Joel’s inability to make up his mind can be frustrating,” she says. “But he’s working on the problem. He’s learned to narrow a decision down to two choices and then he brings out the coin that he now always carries.”
“It took me two years to pick out the right coin,” Pilkage acknowledged. “The silver dollar had a satisfying heft to it, there was a substantive feeling that I liked, but the quarter was easier handling, and I could get it almost up to the ceiling. Finally, I had to flip a nickel to decide which of them to use.”
It was at that point in the interview that this reporter had to be restrained by bystanders from beating Pilkage to death.
Asked how he could possibly be undecided about Kamala Harris vs. Donald Trump at this point in the campaign, Pilkage shrugged and thought carefully for a few hours before answering.
“Mm, yeah,” he said. “My friends kid me unmercifully about that. I don’t actually have any friends, but I imagine if I did, they would. I’m a little bored by politics, so I don’t usually start paying attention to the campaign until the night before the election and then it puts me to sleep, all that blather. But I feel that voting is the duty of every citizen, so I always vote, no matter how iffy the weather.”
Somehow, I knew if he existed he’d be from Ohio. Or maybe Illinois: I don’t know. 🤷🏻♂️
Sarah Longwell's focus groups with undecideds help me understand these people!