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By Wellington C. Ramos

For months now, most pollsters have been telling the American people that this year’s presidential election will be too close to call. Yet, they know that in the United States the president is elected by the number of Electoral College votes he or she obtains from winning the popular vote cast in each state.

Born in Dangriga Town, the cultural capital of Belize, Wellington Ramos has BAs in Political Science and History from Hunter College, NY, and an MA in Urban Studies from Long Island University. He is an Adjunct Professor of Political Science and History

The more people a state has, the larger the Electoral College vote is. Every ten years a census is done in the United States to determine if states gained or lost people. States also lose congressional seats when their population decreases.

It is possible for a presidential candidate to get the most votes and still not be president because he or she lost the Electoral College vote. This happened when the Democratic candidate Albert Gore lost the presidential election to George Bush Jr. in 2000 due to the controversies that occurred in the state of Florida.

According to the recent Electoral College count based on most polling that has been done by several polling agencies, the Democratic Party candidate, President Barack Obama, has 237 Electoral College votes and he needs 33 more to win. Mitt Romney, the Republican Party presidential candidate, has 206 Electoral College votes and he needs 64 more to win.

The following states are considered leaning Democrat to vote for President Barack Obama: Maine (4), Michigan (16), Minnesota (10), New Mexico (5) and Pennsylvania (20), totaling 55 Electoral College votes, which will give the president a total of 292 Electoral College votes -- more than the 270 needed to win.

The states that are considered tossup states are: Colorado (9), Florida (29), Iowa (6), Ohio (18) and Wisconsin (10), a total of 72 Electoral College votes. In looking at all these states and their voting record over the years, the only states that President Barack Obama stands a chance of losing are Colorado and Florida, which gives you a total of 38 Electoral College votes, but he would still add 34 Electoral College votes from the other states to his 292 giving him a total of 326 Electoral College votes.

Mitt Romney has an uphill battle to climb with his 206 Electoral College votes because, according to this map, it will be difficult for him to get the 64 Electoral College votes on November 6, 2012, unless he can perform a miracle, because I cannot see where those votes will come from.

When I was watching the Republican Convention recently, whenever I tried to watch it I ended up turning the television off because it was too negative. It was all about blaming the president for everything and making a mockery of him as if he is nobody, with Dirty Harry Clint Eastwood, one of my favorite actors in the past.

On the other hand, the Democratic Convention gave me a feeling of inclusion and wanting to be with the people who were there. Mitt Romney is not the problem it is the Tea Party and the Republican Party and if they do not change their attitudes, it will be difficult for them to win future elections. The people controlling the Republican Party act as if America belongs to them and they alone and they do not want other Americans to benefit from what this country has to offer.

If you look at most of the elections that the Republican Party has won over the years, they used deceitful tactics, lies and propaganda to convince people to vote for them. They fail to realize that the American people are not stupid and resent ir when people try to disrespect their intelligence.

Many members of the Tea Party and the Republican Party are racist and they want to pretend as if they are not, but the American people are getting sick and tired of their politics. They will play on the American people’s mind again by using these emotional issues like same sex marriage, abortion, healthcare and other wedge issues just to get votes but it will not work.

People do not want the political parties to tell them how to live their lives. They want a party that will help them to achieve the American dream. The economy is in bad shape but the American people do not believe that President Barack Obama is responsible for the current state of our economy. Especially after our country wasted trillions of dollars on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, bailed out Wall Street and others who now are refusing to give back some money to the American people so that they can gain meaningful employment to feed their families and themselves.

They know what President Barack Obama inherited when he became president of this country and they are convinced that it will be many years of reconstruction before America can become the country in the world it once was. They also know that, if they vote in the Republicans to deal with our economic crisis, the poor, working class and middle class citizens will endure more pain and suffering. The election will be won in the voting booths and not through polls come November. The pollsters must wait until our American people vote and not try to use their polls to suppress votes or predict the outcome of this election.

Not only should the American people deny the Republicans the presidency but they should be voted out of the House of Representatives and the Senate come election day for being professional obstructionists in Congress over the years.

Sometimes I wonder if some of these pollsters are getting funds to fabricate polls to favour a certain candidate or candidates. There is too much money being spent on these elections and it is now time to stop this madness. I think these are other issues our Attorney General’s Office should add to his list along with the use of voter identification in some states to deter minorities from exercising their hard fought right to vote.

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