The US economy is straining at the point of collapse this week and will probably be a hot topic of conversation amongst the travellers down the pub later. Everyone I meet intends to vote for Obama and Bush is universally derided amongst Gringos and Europeans alike but will he be the solution that the country needs? Time will tell but sadly its unlikely he will make it into office.

Here’s why:

 Barack_Obama

1. Diebold

“Diebold, criticized last year for selling voting machines while its chairman raised money for Republican political candidates, has banned its senior executives from making such donations.

He has since said he feels badly about the letter and has sworn off politics. ” USA Today 8th Jun 2004

Since the US turned to electronic voting it has been wide open to election fraud. Take 82 minutes of your life and watch the documentary ‘Hacking Democracy’ on Google Videos. If this isn’t enough to convince you the supposed ‘greatest democracy on earth’ isn’t just a sham and you should be very afraid of another stolen election I don’t know what is. How can a computer count negative votes?

Still certain that your countries election system is safe? How about the fact that the machines have contained an error “but the logic error that is the root of the problem has been part of the software for 10 years, said Chris Riggall, a spokesman for Premier Election Solutions, formerly known as Diebold*.” and won’t be fixed before the 2008 Presidential Election?

Electronic voting isn’t a terrible idea, but the need for a proper paper trail is such that they shouldn’t be used until a fool proof system is invented. We might be waiting a while.

*Tip - if your company has an image problem simply rename it, it worked well for the British Nuclear power station Windscale, which has leaked a huge amount of radiation over the years. Its been called Sellafield since 1981 to improve its image. People’s memories are very short.

2. Racism

“I can no more disown [Wright] than I can disown my white grandmother, a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed her by on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”

Barack Obama 18th Mar 2008

The US has come a long way since the Million Man March and the death of Martin Luther King. That Barack has been nominated truly is a monumental feat but the United States remains a nation that still has problems with race. Black people are able to improve their social position these days but it broke my heart to drive across the US last year and only see black people emptying the garbage and using the most un-American form of transport,  walking.  Late one night in a Walmart store I heard a black woman pleading with a local cop to give her a ride home because she had no other way of getting home. Not owning a car, even in these days of $4 gas means, you really have nothing.

It was very brave of Obama to admit that his Grandmother was afraid of black youths in the street; this kind of illogical racism should be discussed if we’re ever to get over it. I felt a moment of apprehension myself in New York in April when I got into the service elevator for 17th Street Photo with a couple of black guys, but then I had recently been told a story about someone getting mugged in an elevator. And they were both bigger than me :p After walking around Kisoro, Uganda in the middle of the night as the only white person in the town, surrounded by curious locals mostly cured my foolish notions about the reality of race. I’m far more afraid of stupid white people these days, but if a mostly logical person like myself still can’t help notice a persons colour what about the average white voter?

The divisions of politics are firmly entrenched in US politics. The West and the North East will vote Democrat, Jesusland will vote Republican. There are enough mostly intelligent people that watch the racist Fox News (600k people think so), remember something about Obama being Muslim, swearing on a Koran or simply thinking his name is a bit too much like Osama Bin Laden. It only takes a few percentage to swing a state. Then you throw in the Grandmothers who have been mugged by a black man and with their finger hovering over the Diebold machine screen they simply think they better vote for that ‘nice white Republican’.

We’re all African and even Jesus was black and I don’t think he would be elected either.

3. Assassination

“In the Niagara of liberal angst just after Mr. Bush’s victory on Nov. 2, the Canadian government’s immigration Web site reported an increase in inquiries from the United States to about 115,000 a day from 20,000.”

NY Times 8th Feb 2005

If you have thousands of normal Americans willing to move to Canada because they don’t like the result of the Presidential Election you can be sure there are a few million angry (and very well armed) people living in the US who would rather die than see a black president, and will be happy to try. Obama has the dubious honour of receiving Secret Service Protection back in May 07, the earliest in any candidates history, but then he is the first black runner.

Americans love to try to kill their presidents with seventeen attempts, four successful. You can bet there will be plenty of people thinking about how to do it before the polls even open.

4. Apathy

“Shy Tory Factor is a name given by British opinion polling companies to a phenomenon observed in the 1990s, where the share of the vote won by the Conservative Party (i.e. the ‘Tories’) in elections was substantially higher than the proportion of people in opinion polls who said they would vote for the party.”

Wikipedia

Even if you don’t believe the the 2004 election was stolen due to electronic manipulation or just plain fraud the state that lost Kerry the election, Illinois, was plagued with rain and ten hour waits at the Democratic polls which changed the outcome. Too many voters simply walked away from the right to vote that people have fought (and died) for.

If the election goes ahead, even with Barack ahead in the polls, there is still no guarantee of success for him. Witness the 1992 British Election which I remember with unhappy memories, the exit polls all predicted a Labour victory and the Conservatives were re-elected. Perhaps a few too many people thought Labour had it in the bag and went to the pub.

The sooner the US introduces Compulsory Voting the better, I’m sure the fines from apathetic non-voters would be a great money earner.

5. “Terrorism”

“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.” 

G.W. Bush, Washington, D.C., 5th Aug  2004

GW Bush has all the tools and apparatus of law to impose martial law if ’something happens’. After 8 years of power and little opposition to the fact that he’s still conducting a illegal and pointless war in Iraq while giving up hunting for Bin Laden, don’t you think he might be just a little tempted?



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