What if Barack Obama does not win?

Senator Barack Obama is leading in all polls in the race to be the American President. As I write, he leads 51.1 % to 44.2 % against Senator John McCain, on the Yahoo poll. He should therefore win by a landslide, but will he?

I wonder because of historical reasons. There is the so-called Bradley effect, named after a black politician, Tom Bradley, who led by a long way, in the polls, in the race to be California governor in 1982 - but then lost the election. The common understanding of that situation is that white people did not wish to be seen as racist, in polling, so declared that they would vote for him - but that in the privacy of the polling booth, their true opinions showed - and they voted against him. One concern is that the same thing might happen to Obama: if America is still sufficiently racist, there might be a surprising degree of votes against him - and votes for the other candidate, John McCain, simply because he is not black.

There are other concerns too. Many believe that the 2004 election of George Bush was flawed, owing to electoral fraud. There were some shocking practices at work. In one case, an area received more votes for the Republican Bush than there were actually voters in that area! Clearly, fraud was at work here. There were also allegations of interference with the electronic voting machines, with staff from the company that made the machines seen entering instructions into the machines shortly before a change of voting pattern of against Bush, to for Bush.

Worse still, in some Democratic areas of America, voting machines were unavailable for up to seven hours, leaving potential voters unable to vote AT ALL. They either had to queue for many hours - or give up and go home without voting. Of course, many of them did just that, giving the election to Bush. Will there be voting machine shortages in Democratic areas in this election?

In the present election, too, there are other worrying developments. In some areas flyers have been distributed, on official looking paper, saying that Republicans are to vote on November 4th, and Democrats on November 5th. Should any Democrat believe this, they would turn up on the 5th to find the election over.

I find all of this very disappointing. America is supposedly the world's leading democracy - but it suffers a little too much from the dishonest actions of individuals trying to influence the outcome of the election, by any means possible. This needs to be curbed. It would be wise to trace the culprits in all irregularities and confer long prison sentences upon them, to discourage such practices in future. Whether the Americans will do so, is another matter - after all, if the practices are too widespread, the winner of the election may have been "elected" by them - and would hardly, therefore, be interested in punishing those responsible.

Senator Barack Obama is leading consistently in all polls, across the board, with margins in some polls of up to 13%. If he does not win, therefore, there will be the widespread belief, in America, that the polls have been rigged and that the election has been stolen. (There will be this belief even if the true cause is that of racism: such is the effect of the instances of electoral irregularities that have come to light, so far.) This belief can only lead to trouble on a grand scale. It is quite possible that America will see nationwide riots, if it is President McCain, rather than President Obama.

Even if President Obama is duly elected. I have one further concern: what if he is assassinated? America nurtures a fairly large body of white supremacists: surely they would find the election of a Black President, insufferable? It is likely that, upon election, President Obama will become the target of many plots, from white supremacists, to remove him by force of the bullet or the bomb. Should he be assassinated, of course, chaos is likely to ensue in the United States, with the nation divided along racial lines. No doubt President Obama's death would not be the only one to occur should he be assassinated.

America is in a difficult position therefore. If Barack Obama does not win, America will face chaos; if he does win, but is then assassinated, America will face chaos. So, whether or not President Obama is elected, there could be trouble to come, for the United States of America.

As an observer, I find it intriguing that all of these problems come at a time when America is facing its biggest economic crisis in modern times. Whoever is elected, America faces interesting times ahead (in the Chinese sense of the term).

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

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