I am a foul mouthed political brawler.

And de Volkskrant (the best Dutch newspaper) has had similar stuff (charisma vs. substance), as well as sneaky humor.

But we did go out for a few beers the other night with my husband's best friend, who said "I like Obama.  He's for change."  So I said "change of what?  Which policies of his do you like?"  And he couldn't answer my question.  He laughed, though, and acknowledged that I'd made a point.  He also couldn't articulate why he "hates" Hillary Clinton, except she "takes money from lobbyists".

[T]hese budgetary post-mortems tend to follow a familiar pattern; winners are by definition smart, and losers are dumb and wasteful.

In the larger sense, large scale democracy is always subject to abuse.

The system relies on a large number of volunteers to run the preceincts and tabulate the votes.  In large part, we rely on the good faith of the volunteers, but both major parties typically have their own volunteers keeping an eye out.

The real failures occur at the state level where legislatures discriminate against poorer districts when it comes to apportioning equipment.

If states were serious about election fairness, we'd see a lot more investment in equipment for all precincts.

You get a lot of games being played by State office holders throwing names off voting lists for no good reason.  We've had the US Justice Dept ginning up "voter fraud" cases claiming it an epidemic when intentional voter fraud is extremely rare not counting Ann Coulter's transgression.

Voter intimidation is a very real problem.  Don't need to worry about counting the votes of people you've scared away from the ballot box.

I'm more worried about the shenanigans that occur before the voting takes place then counting the ballots afterward.

Look at the recent acquital of that guy Tobin who, as part of the GOP plan, lead the efforts to block Democratic voting efforts in New Hampshire in a close election in '02.  He may be re-tried, but he may get off despite the plaine evidence of wrond-doing.