*steps up onto soapbox*

Ladies and Gentlemen,

If you're among my readership, chances are you're pleased as punch that Senator Barack Obama is doing so well in the polls. You're relieved that his apparent popularity means an end to eight years of Bush's with-me-or-ag'int-me, neo-conservative, Rebubbalican, cronyistic, big-brother, I-don't-care-what-any-other-country-thinks-of-America policies.

Well, don't hold your breath.

What follows is a discussion of the unthinkable: Why John McCain will win the U.S. election.

Certainly now you're thinking, "Jesse, that's a little alarmist, don't you think?" Oh my friends, I have not yet begun to alarm you.

I don't count myself among conspiracy theorists. I believe that terrorists were the ones who attacked on 9/11, I believe that Neil Armstrong was the first man on the moon, Paul McCartney has never died, and JFK was shot by some crackpot who believed that in doing so he was saving the moral fabric of America. But it's not just conspiracy theorists who suspect that the 2000 presidential election may have been stolen by the Republicans. This belief is grounded in a number of irregularities.

From the outset, 2000 was an incredibly close race. It was clear that the country was politically polarized down the middle. So that outcome was heavily dependant on swing states with lots of electoral college votes. Such a state was Florida, where the majority or irregularities occurred. Faulty ballots which accidentally put Cheney beside Gore (causing voters to erroneously vote Gore/Cheney) were discounted. Other paper-chad ballot designs confused some voters. Additionally, Al Gore won the popular vote of the United States, meaning that more Americans voted for Al Gore, but George Bush won due to the division of the electoral colleges. And all this from a country with pathetically low voter turnout.

Nevertheless, the Democrats rolled over for the sake of national unity, and things went along without incident for about 10 months. I'm sure you know the rest.

As time went on, some members of the technologically-inclined blogosphere found something new to whittle at. Many states have moved to using electronic voting machines, and hackers begun to find that, with a little knowledge of the machines' software, it was relatively easy to surreptitiously hack a voting machine in order to change results. In fact, machines were so poorly designed as to include exposed USB ports, allowing a hacker to simply insert a USB key at a voting booth which would execute a program and rewrite results. Numerous exploits are well-documented, and well-parodied.

So naturally, I get a little concerned when I hear stories that U.S. citizens who participated in early voting had difficulty getting voting machines to recognize their vote for Barack Obama. Voters claimed that touching the democratic candidate on-screen caused the machine to check the ballot for John McCain. Organizers claimed that voters were "touching the screen incorrectly".

Sound fishy? It doesn't end there. Some voters, U.S.-born citizens, are now complaining that they've received erroneous cards telling them that they're not U.S. citizens and are not entitled to vote. The card contains a letter which states that they must provide a federal office with proof of citizenship within one week, from a date exactly one week before the letter is postmarked.

Then we've got the dirty tricks. Someone has been mailing out false campaign notices which claim to be from the Obama campaign and emphasize race politics. As is usual for the Republican spin doctors, the letters use Obama's full name, Barack Hussein Obama, in some maddening attempt to use Obama's multicultural heritage to frighten voters.

The U.S. Presidential race is a tight one, and as such, it's easy to steal. Polls would seem to indicate that Obama has the momentum on his side. The public is starting to realize that Obama has a running-mate who isn't a half-baked MILF hockey-mom who can't cough up anything of substance on national policy who is one dead septigenarian away from being President of the most powerful country in the world. By most logic, Obama should be the next President.

America would have the rest of the world believe that they are the ultimate bastion of democracy on Earth. But really, all it takes is one co-ordinated effort at hacking voting machines by a relatively small ground of individuals to change the result of a presidential election. As I said, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but if I'm watching TV on November 4th, 2008, and I see a McCain victory, I'm afraid that I won't believe the U.S. is a democracy anymore.

The world is watching you closely, America.

Very. Closely.