Talking DC Vote Blues

(I'm still working on the music, but it will be a talking-blues pattern for most of it).

Today I saw an analysis of historical Presidential Elections and how close they
were. They did a mathematical analysis to determine the smallest number of
votes it would take to change the outcome of an election. This depends on the
popular vote within a state, and the electorial vote between states.

https://web.archive.org/web/20080923000039/https://www.msu.edu/~sheppa28/elections.html

How about some illustrations?

Well the 2000 election had the smallest number of votes determine the swing...
all in florida of course, 269 votes would have changed the outcome.

In contrast, to change the results of the 1972 Nixon-McGovern election you'd
change votes in 26 states starting with Alaska and working your way down the
list. You'd have to change over 3 million votes to do it the most effecient way
possible.

So I'm looking at this site, which contains all sorts of information about
which states influenced which elections and so on... and I start looking for
DC. 'Cause I live and I vote in DC. But it's not in there. I shoot off an email
to the author of the site, and he replies, says that the site only includes
information on states that could have changed the election. Well I wrote back
and pointed out that every single other state was in there... and that zero
percent is still a number!

Well he must've seen the light because he put DC on there. Wayyyy down at the
bottom you can see it. 11 elections and zero influence. See the people in DC
are a stubborn lot, and by the time you changed enough votes here to actually
change the overall DC vote... well you'd have already changed a whole lot of
other states. It's not worth the effort to mess with DC's votes at all.

So. In a time where people feel like their vote doesn't count. In a time where
voting fraud has become a mere matter of software update... and where our
leaders seem as disconnected as ever from the will of the people.... at this
time when I really really want my vote to count... this is when I realize that
my individual vote means less than anybody else's!

Taxation without representation
But you ain't seen nothin yet
'cause way over in the District
My vote's already set

Why can't we be a swing state?
I just want to be heard,
it's getting just a little old,
to show the whitehouse the bird

It's not that I disagree,
It's satisfaction that I seek,
The chance to make a difference,
I want the chance to speak,

So I've got a tricky plan
to get us into play,
a little less than half of you
just vote some other way