Baldrick--I know you were addressing Lango, but yes, the U.S. midterm elections are expected to be VERY interesting indeed.
The general concensus--even from the Republicans--seems to be that the Democrats are "expected" to win back the House, and possibly the Senate (although this is considered a tougher battle).
On the other hand, the Dems truly "expected" to win back Congress in 2002 and 2004 as well, and we all know how that turned out, so as much as I hope this happens, I'm not counting on it.
In addition, the horrendously flawed touchscreen voting machine debacle is just expected to be even worse this year (take a look at Maryland's primary elections a month or so ago for a sign of things to come). Fortunately, my own state (Michigan) has standardized on the less-troubling "optical scan" machines (which still have some issues, but not nearly as many as the paperless touch-screen models causing so much controversy).
Plus, you have all sorts of other voter supression nastiness & confusion--misprinted ballots, missent ballots, provisional ballots, messed-up voter registration databases, misplaced or underplaced voting machines, ill-informed election workers...the list goes on and on. While these things have always caused some amount of trouble, they've become particularly troubling in recent years. Those will cause all sorts of fun, no doubt; expect lots of legal challenges, lawsuits, recounts, and so forth.
Then, you have the negative campaign ads, which have truly gone into the toilet this year. In one race, the incumbent is accusing his challenger of having called phone sex lines paid for with public funds. It turns out that the candidates' assistant had mis-dialed a number, then *immediately* hung up and called the correct number (which was almost identical). Total time on the wrong connection: about 20 seconds or so. Total charge to the public (since that line was on a public account): about $1.50 or so.
Finally, in addition to the federal House/Senate races, we also have about 20 state Governorships, assorted state ballot proposals, thousands of state legislature & judgeship races, and God only knows how many local races (city council, mayor, county commissioner, yadda yadda yadda).
Personally, I think that Federal, State and Local elections should be broken up somehow; there's just too damn many of them for most people to keep track of.
In my own case, here in Michigan, the statewide elections which I find most puzzling are the ones for state University board of trustees. It's odd because only 3 of our universities have elected boards; the rest are all appointed. This means that some guy in Eagle River (in the Upper Pennisula) is expected to vote for the board of trustees for Wayne State University--some 600+ miles away.
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