The only accurate poll this Fall is the one given by buycostumes.com. Since the Carter/Reagan election the candidate that has sold the most masks is also the candidate that has won the election. Scarier still is the fact that George W. is currently leading John Kerry in mask sales.

This Halloween be prepared to get scared out of your mind. It isn’t because little Timmy from next door has reached his teens and you’ve seen him hiding eggs in his back yard since the hottest days of July and you know that since you yelled at him for riding his skateboard past nine o’clock at night on your front curb that at least a dozen of those eggs will be heading your way come mischief night. No, this Halloween will prove to be scarier than anything little Timmy can come up with in his adolescent mind. This Halloween expect to be frightened from the sight of politicians, lawyers, political commentators and presidential candidates appearing like zombies out of the grave, wandering the streets, looking for brains to suck.

If it seems like you have been seeing a lot more of President George W. Bush and Presidential challenger Senator John Kerry it isn’t only because the candidates are searching the cushions of their couches for loose change in order to bombard the airwaves with mudslinging, name-calling, and empty, repetitive rhetoric that sounds more like catch-phrases than anything remotely presidential. Its because its Halloween and thousands of George W. Bush and John Kerry masks have been sold this year. What’s scarier than the fact that anyone would want to impersonate one of these men is the fact that in recent elections the sale of presidential masks has consistently predicted the winner of the presidential election.

Buycostumes.com researched presidential elections back to the 1980 Reagan/Carter election and found that the candidate’s face who sold the most masks won the election. As of Oct. 21^st 54-percent of those who bought masks bought a mask of President Bush, while 46-percent bought Senator Kerry masks. The most recent USA Today/CNN/Gallop Poll shows that amongst registered voters 46-percent support Kerry while 49-percent support Bush.

In March of 2001, then Bush Press Secretary Ari Fleischer stated that the president believes, “No research to create a human being (clone) should take place in the United States.” Yet Bush, whom I am sure is aware of the mask sale poll, has been remarkably silent about the potential of thousands of Bush clones wandering the country.

But even scarier to me is how our country will react to whomever is elected President. Four years ago President Bush ran on a ticket that emphasized uniting a bitterly partisan divided nation. That rhetoric was quickly dissolved once a partisan Supreme Court decided who would be our President. Even before the votes have been cast and counted both candidates are threatening lawsuits, and recounts.

Come November 3^rd I suspect we will all be wearing masks. Forty-nine-percent will be wearing the mask of Republican, while the other forty-nine percent will wear the mask of Democrat. Two-percent will have voted for Ralph Nader and remain in hiding. These masks hide who we are and what we really care about. Instead of showing us as a nation of individuals they show us as a nation of divided clones, believing what we were told to believe because we belong to a certain side and hating the other side because of what they believe.

Because of terrorism, war and the election this Halloween is proving to be scarier than most. But to me it isn’t half as scary as this country will be on Nov. 3^rd.

Nate House nhouse308@hotmail.com is a freelance writer who lives in Philadelphia. His stories, columns and essays have appeared in The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Philadelphia Tribune, the Philadelphia Weekly, The Philadelphia Metro, Roadbike Magazine, Troika Magazine, Veins Magazine and Chesapeake Bay Magazine.