Must We Kill the Frog?

The New York Times reports that Democrats are ramping up their legal affiliations in preparation for election challenges like those seen in 2000.  The potential stands for this to be a real monkey wrench in the gears of the national election. Not, specifically, the Democratic preparation, but the general feeling gathering on both sides of the aisle that all parties will have to fight tooth and nail for every vote.
 
The Florida debacle served only to provide America with a glimpse of what could happen, rather than a worst-case scenario. Generally, citizens and politicians tend to have faith in the groups that run the elections and the election process.  We tend to believe that the election boards and officials, if not nonpartisan, are at least aware of the gravity of their position and of its potential for abuse.  Thus, elections that are not extremely close are rarely challenged or recounted.  However, the Florida 2000 situation gave publicity to the fact that election challenges can be a very effective tool for (at the very least) obfuscation of the results.
 
I am not particularly concerned about the hard-core blue or hard-core red states. I think it's likely that those elections with have clear enough definition that there will be neither authority nor need to challenge them. However, the battleground states (including mine, Missouri), are likely to be set upon by immediate challenges, regardless of the named winner. 
 
Faith is a tricky thing.  We think about faith in terms of religion, or in self-perception: faith in God, or faith in our own abilities. But, we also have faith in everyday things.  We have to put faith in those who provide us with the information we can't get ourselves. As students, we have faith that the information in our textbooks is accurate. Most people have faith that established media outlets will tell us the important things we need to know.  We have faith in airlines that when our ticket says "Atlanta" that we will, indeed, arrive in Atlanta. But each of these everyday faiths has an available form of confirmation, whether or not we are aware of it. Books have review boards, media outlets are subjected to watchdog groups, and airlines are subject to a capitalist system that will cease to support them if they aren't accurate.  Religious faith is on the other side of the coin. It provides no confirmation for our beliefs, other than whatever support our religious background provides. I believe in the salvation of Christ primarily because of my feelings, as based on and supplemented by the bible.
 
Up until 2000, faith in the electoral system, like much of our faith in governmental bureaucracies, was somewhere in the between those extremes. Although the majority of Americans assumed that there was a system keeping the elections honest, they weren't particularly aware of what that system was.  This election cycle is likely to provide us with further destruction of that faith, as we are forced to dissect the process to see its complete results.