It occurs to me that, with the Republicans facing a likely defeat in the presidential election, that, while most of them might become resigned to defeat, some of them will become more desperate. And desperate men commit hopeful crimes--high-risk crimes that you hope you don't get caught for.

And by that I mean, we might see some blatant, unusually large-scope or large-effect attempts to defraud the election, as some desperate Republicans push their usual vote thievery and suppression and miscounting beyond safe limits.

And that would be ironic, because it might be the Republicans' voter fraud that finally gets us to fix voter fraud--but not the fake, minority/poor voter suppression type of "voter fraud" that Republican operatives have been shamming about for a decade now, but the real, systemic, voting machine and voting system vulnerabilities that the computer scientists and security specialists have been warning us about for a decade now.

But the real world isn't as neat about its ironies as stories are, unfortunately. Still, the underlying thought, that we might see relatively a lot of Republican vote trickery get exposed this season because their desperation will lead them to take greater chances, that's a pretty good supposition, and I'll stick with it.

(I early voted last week.)