AN: Totally ridiculous 'fic written up in less than an hour from a burst of inspiration based on current events. Not a single serious moment or iota of emotional weight or value will be found here. Proceed at your own risk.
For Finn, the nightmare began with a phone call.
He was visiting home, having a pleasant talk with his mother, telling her about everything he'd been doing and seeing over the past months, when the phone rang.
He started to get up, but his mother touched his arm. Her eyes were wide.
"Don't answer that, Finn."
The phone rang again. He frowned.
"But Mom, what if it's Burt, and..."
Ring.
"Finn... Don't answer it."
Ring.
"Mom..."
Ring.
"Please, Finn..." Carole was pale, her lower lip trembling. "Don't..."
Ring.
He couldn't let it go. It wasn't in his nature. Besides, it couldn't be worse than the anticipation. He got up, his mother's stifled cry barely registering in his ears. He had to know.
Ring.
He picked up the receiver. "H-hello...?"
"Hello, this is Iris with Public Policy Polling. Are you over eighteen?"
Finn shrieked in horror. The receiver slipped out of his hand, somehow neatly crashing back onto the cradle. He whirled towards his mother, who was now standing. Her arms were crossed tightly over her chest, as if she were trying to comfort-hug herself.
"It was... them, wasn't it?" Her voice shook.
Finn nodded dumbly. He ran forward and embraced her. She returned the hug with the desperate clutch of a drowning woman.
"I don't know why I don't just unplug it. Oh, Finn, thank God you were away... Why did you come back, son? Why?"
The phone rang again. They stared.
"Oh, God, Mom..."
Ring.
Ring.
Ring.
"No, I'm seventeen. And an illegal immigrant. And a convicted felon. Just leave me alone!" Artie practically snapped his wrist turning off his cell phone. "God, if I weren't so addicted to this thing..."
The others at the lunch table nodded sympathetically. "I haven't answered a phone call in three weeks," Joe said.
"I haven't watched TV since August," Sam added. "I was afraid I'd throw it through a window if I saw one more campaign commercial."
"At least Kurt is safe in a non-swing state," Blaine sighed.
"Doesn't do much for the rest of us, does it?" Tina said. "And there's still over a month to go. I don't think my sanity can hold out much longer."
"Yeah, but what can we do?" The entire table went silent at Artie's despairing question. Finally, after a long interval of silence that only chewing (and three more pollster calls) interrupted, he finally spoke again. "There's one person who may be able to help us."
"... So we could really use your help."
Sue Sylvester stared at the group in front of her. "You do realize that this could involve some heavy duty fraud."
Marley shrugged. "We don't care. We just want it to stop."
"So..." Artie began hopefully, "will you do it?"
At that moment, Sue's office phone rang. Without taking her eyes off the glee club, or otherwise moving in the slightest, she picked up the receiver and a nearby air horn, blasted a deafening burst into the phone, and hung up again.
While the teenagers groaned and cleared out their ears, Sue spoke.
"Last night, I'd just gotten Robin to bed when..." She paused. "I'll do it. Hell, consider this a freebie. Don't you worry your pointy little tone deaf heads off. I'll take care of everything."
"... And in a shocking and unprecedented turn of events in Columbus, lawmakers have passed a new system for allocating Ohio's electoral votes: Ohio's eighteen electoral votes will now go to the candidate with the best singing voice, as judged by three randomly chosen Ohio citizens. States can allocate their electoral votes using whatever criteria they choose, although most use a winner-take-all system based on state popular vote. This sudden and inexplicable change just a month before the election is already being scrutinized by teams of lawyers from both campaigns, but Governor John Kasich, who signed the change into law today, is confident it will hold up."
"This law has very... powerful supporters," a clip of the governor at a hastily called press conference said, "who have assured me that everything is above board and will pass muster for this election. And that my wife Karen is personally safe and sound. Next question?"
"In the meantime, all polling has been suspended in the state until this new political bombshell can be fully processed, and both President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney are rumored to have hired vocal coaches to..."
In the McKinley High School teacher's lounge, two people were watching on television, one with a smug smirk, the other with horror.
"Sue..." Will Schuester croaked, "did you just meddle with a national election just to stop a few phone calls?"
She snorted. "Please, William. Do I really look like someone who would care about my own sleep and sanity over the sanctity of the electoral process in this country?"
Will chose not to answer. "But... blackmailing the entire Ohio government, that silly system...! That should've been impossible...!"
Sue actually looked personally offended. "You think that was hard? Try rollerblading down the Grand Canyon South Rim while carrying a three hundred pound circus performer named Big Bertha. That's hard." With that, Sue swept up her coffee cup and left the teacher's lounge.
And peace, blessed blessed peace, reigned over all of Ohio.