The Swing Voter of Staten Island takes place over the course of a week in November 1981. Uli, suffering from amnesia, finds himself on a mission, but isn't quite sure what it is, who sent him, or even who he is. He ventures across the perilous wilds of New York City, through abandoned neighborhoods and burned-out battlefields. But Uli soon awakens to the awful fact that this isn't New York City at all. He is a key player in a strange, alternate history of both his city and country.
Uli has found himself trapped in New York, Nevada, isolated in the center of an impenetrable desert-where the US military was able to transform one of its ""military situation cities"" into a temporary refuge center, designed to resemble New York. While battling to make sense of his surroundings, Uli slowly remembers who he is and his own culpability in creating the current situation.