Interpretations:Vote Or Don't

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Your Vote

An honest take on the US voting process, in the critical election year of 2008. If you wanted Obama to win and you knew your friend was for McCain, you didn't want your friend to vote. Hence: "You might vote for someone else / And I might want to change your mind / So vote and don't".

Anyway because of the electoral college, what voice does your vote have in a state that is already decided one way or the other? In Texas my vote for Obama was simply a symbolic gesture and I knew it from the beginning. On the other hand, if you lived in Florida in 2000, your vote might have been one of the 300 to tip the election. Hence: "It might make a difference / Vote and know / It might not make a difference." --Nehushtan 20:20, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Those outside the US may not understand the way "swing" or "battleground" states determine the outcome of presidential elections. Almost every state grants its full set of electoral votes to the winner of the majority of that state's citizen's votes - a policy often described as "winner takes all". So, whether the Republican candidate (for example) wins 40% or 10% of a blue (Democrat) state's popular vote, he or she will receive zero electoral votes from that state. The candidates therefore focus most of their attention on states which might conceivably go one way or the other ("swing"). In-person visits and advertisements are concentrated in those states - of which there are relatively few. If you live in Texas or Kentucky (solidly red), or California or New York (blue) you might not ever see or hear from either candidate. This is my interpretation of the lyric "they're not talking to you": the majority of the citizenry is basically ignored during the election while big (truly big) money is spent persuading a handful of people in arbitrarily defined geographic boundaries to choose a leader for the rest of us. --Nehushtan (talk) 03:01, 23 October 2019 (EDT)