It's Uncredible: Democracy in Action

John Tester takes a deep breath before his huge upset win.

As Ralph Wiggum of "The Simpsons" would put it, ain't it just uncredible how dirty the election campaign was, how marginal the caliber of candidates was, how many people had trouble voting in so many places . . .

And when all was said and done, national voter turnout averaged a very sucky 40 percent, about the same as the 2002 mid-term election.

* There were the robo calls and other voter supression efforts, thinly veiled racist and sexist ads, and wall-to-wall hypocrite pols lying through their gleaming teeth every time you kit the TV remote unit.

And vote-stuffing efforts like that in Republican-rich Daggett County, Utah, where there were more registered voters than residents. Gotta hand it to those Morons, er . . . Mormons.

* There were low-life candidates like Representatives Kurt Weldon and Don Sherwood, two of the Republican incumbents running for their political lives in the backyard of Kiko's House.

Weldon's closing words: "The FBI investigation against me is really a liberal conspiracy."

And Sherwood's: "I did not try to strangle my mistress."

Praise the Lord, both were defeated.

* There were problems aplenty when the polls did open.

In Missouri, the chief of elections was hassled when she tried to vote. Two House incumbents in Ohio and the governor of South Carolina had difficulty voting because of strict new ID card requirements, while in Kentucky, a poll worker attacked a voter (I'm not making this up) and gun-wielding poll watchers in Arizona threatened would-be Hispanic voters.

Most of the polling place difficulties were with new-fangled electronic voting machines, notably in Pennsylvania and Indiana and most especially in Ohio. Yes Ohio, which did a pretty good job yesterday of polishing the black eye that it got in 2004 for innumerable Election Day problems, as well as a botched final count that tipped the state's crucial electoral votes to The Decider.

The most frequently given reasons for the electronic machine problems: Incorrect programming and insufficient training.

I guess two years wasn't enough time to get it right.

By comparison, voting is said to have gone smoothly in Nicaragua.

(Photography by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)