Democracy can be a messy business

I Googled that line to see if I could get the full text of the Badger State Bungle story that appeared in the WSJ today, and "Democracy can be a messy business" turned up 109,000 matches. My, is it that messy? I mean worse than National Socialism, Communism, or Anarchy, or any of those other systems being demonstrated at our state capitals in Wisconsin and Ohio by union members?

"Democracy can be a messy business, but it shouldn't be as big a mess at it's been this week in Wisconsin. A nail-biter of a state supreme court election turned into a political uproar on Thursday with the discovery of 14,000 previously overlooked votes in conservative-leaning Waukesha County. The new totals gave incumbent Justice David Prosser a lead of some 7,500 votes over challenger and union favorite JoAnne Kloppenburg and guaranteed weeks if not months of more political heartburn. Democrats pounced on the new totals, claiming the error must be evidence of partisanship, and state assembly minority leader Peter Barca suggested that Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus's long-time Republican affiliation made the incident "troubling." He's right on competence grounds, though perhaps not on the partisanship. One of Ms. Nickolaus's Democratic colleague attests that overlooking all of the votes in Brookfield, a Milwaukee suburb, was a computer mistake, not a fraud, and that the vote count is accurate."

The original WSJ article is locked, but can be found here.