If this presidential election is as tight as the polls are telling us ? though that is by no means a certainty ? this could become known as the Lawyer's Election.

Citizen's watch groups (and counter-groups), ubiquitous video-recording smart-phones, new voting-machine technologies, and post-Sandy disruption could have us litigating the result for weeks.

The issues being litigated won't be anything as visibly physical as hanging chads, either.  The errors, discrepancies, and razor-thin margins will be hidden deep in the bowels of some software algorithm.  Think virtual hanging chads.

I have the unhappy feeling that a couple of weeks from now I'll be feeling like that Robert Cohen character.