With all the stories about malfunctioning voting machines, mostly in urban areas which are heavily Democratic, I don't think that Bush really has won fairly. I think they faked it just enough to have a small margin in overall numbers (1%) that match recent poll figures. Not to mention that something like 30% of votes were cast on tamper-vulnerable electronic voting machines with no paper trail. It's particularly telling that the U.S. newsmedia is not even reporting this story.

I just don't believe it. How could my fellow countrymen be so blind and so dumb as to re-elect Bush by such a close margin?

I've been thinking about leaving the U.S. even before November 2000 — I had already had several vacations and business conferences in Montreal, Toronto, Windsor, Nova Scotia, and elsewhere; since then I've also been to Vancouver and Vancouver Island; I've already reviewed Canada's Immigration regulations, looked in various areas for real estate, started a bank account, considered whether to look for work or whether my consulting business could survive outside the U.S., etc.

Do you think I should leave, or stay and fight?

A difficulty for me is that I'm just about to start my family, so whatever I do next will likely have to be in the place that I will stay for at least a decade. And outside of Maryland and New York, Canada is the only place I can see raising a family.

I know that no place is 100% perfect and that immigration is very, very hard on people (many of my family only immigrated to the U.S. in the last 30 years, and some gave up and went back because it was too difficult).

All advice will be very much appreciated.