WASHINGTON: With just about 20 days left before the presidential elections, Democratic candidate Sen. Barack Obama is working hard to keep focused on the issues. It isn’t easy when, for example, hundreds of voters in New York have been given absentee ballots on which they could vote for “Barack Osama” for the US presidency.

Obama has faced an uphill battle convincing some people in the Christian majority US that he is not a Muslim.

“Osama” in the US is most often associated with Osama Bin Laden, leader of the Al-Qaeda terrorist group.

Republican Commissioner Larry Bugbee said that despite the staff members whose job is to proof them, this mistake got through. The absentee ballots spelled rival John McCain’s name correctly.

The mistake has caused ridicule for the county, and election officials told reporters it was “an honest mistake innocently done.”

At the time the news became public, only three voters had caught the mistake and called about the ballots. The voters will all get new, corrected ballots sent to them to replace those with the misspelling.

One resident was skeptical that this was a mistake, and pointed out that the letters ‘s’ and ‘b’ are not close on the keyboard.

“It’s a little suspicious and at least grossly incompetent,” the voter said. “If I crossed out the name and wrote in the right spelling my ballot would be invalid.”

Meanwhile, out on the presidential campaign trail, Republican rage against Obama claimed a new victim yesterday: McCain.

McCain rebuked one of his own supporters for saying he was “scared ... to bring a child up” under an Obama presidency.

There was a rumble of disapproval from the crowd when McCain defended his Democratic rival. “I have to tell you he is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States.”

One woman approached McCain near the end of his give-and-take with the crowd and told him she didn’t trust Obama because “he’s an Arab.” McCain cut her off and took the microphone from her hands. “No, ma’am,” he interjected. “He is a decent family man with whom I happen to have some disagreements.”