Composer and playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda has gotten a kick out of musicians like the Decemberists, Nas, and even “Weird Al” Yankovic reworking songs from his award-winning Hamilton musical over the last couple of years. Now, Miranda himself joins in the fun while helping educate Americans about the importance of voting in this year’s election.
Teaming up with the nonprofit organization When We All Vote, Miranda and a few Hamilton cast members took to Zoom to perform songs with rewritten lyrics to some favorites like “Aaron Burr, Sir,” “Guns and Ships” and “The Election of 1800.”
In the musical’s namesake song “Alexander Hamilton,” the lyrics are changed to remind people that approximately 100 million voters sat out the 2016 election. It also explained that the election was swung in Donald Trump’s favor by only 80,000 votes across the states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
“Alexander Hamilton/My name is Alexander Hamilton/And there’s a million things I haven’t done/But just you wait, just you, wait” was changed to: “Ordinary citizen/I’m just an ordinary citizen/I’m not political, I’ve never been/And I don’t vote. I don’t vote.”
Other songs educate potential voters on how easy it is to register to vote online, why voters should take the initiative and vote early in person if that’s possible and why voting by mail is so important this election because of the pandemic.
In one song, the cast sing about the unsubstantiated claims from Trump that voting by mail will welcome massive voter fraud. “Yo, the mail is rigged and fake/It’s not but your concerns are valid/I heard there’s voter fraud/And those who want to change my ballot.”
For more information on voting, visit the When We All Vote website here.