Will It Be Fearless Fosdick or Dick Tracy At The Polls?

It seems to me—and I haven't seen this in other blogs or news stories, though it may have been noted out there—it seems to me that the big advantage the Dems hold for Tuesday in fighting electronic vote fraud and other vote chicanery is that they're certain to take at least the House. Which means they'll acquire power to investigate, hold hearings, require testimony and, if any testimony is proved false, throw people in jail. That is, in fact, a lot of power. Now, if the Dems don't win the House we'll have a crisis of another sort, as it'll be unambiguously clear that the election was stolen. But assuming they do, the scope for malfeasance becomes significantly reduced. The Republicans will focus on tight Senate races and, of course, try to take maximum advantage of the confusion electronic voting produces, but major flips from pre-election polling would be most surprising. Expect, nevertheless, some fierce post-election litigation. At this point it looks to me like the Dems will pick up four or five Senate seats, net (short one or two for control) and should be thinking about how to bring a Republican or two across the aisle. (Lincoln Chafee, for example, assuming he wins his seat.)