If the public polling turns out to be wrong and we end up with an election result that is within the margin of litigation, things could get uglier than we’ve ever seen before. Even in 2000. Or so says Mike Carvin, a former Justice Department official who represented the Bush/Cheney campaign in Bush v. Gore.

“If this election is at all close, the litigation needed to straighten it out will dwarf anything we saw in Florida in 2000,” Carvin said in a statement. “We’ve already seen challenges to the failure to count military ballots in Virginia and to exclude legitimate Republican poll watchers in Philadelphia. Coupled with the enormous validation problems caused by ACORN’s dubious registrations, record turnout, new voting technology, and the provisional ballot provisions of the Help America Vote Act, we could see systemic post-election litigation challenges even where one candidate is tens of thousands voters ahead in a particular state. So both sides may be very active today in challenges to ineligible voters and machine malfunctions, and in efforts to extend polling hours. An early signal on how litigious things will get may be whether the Obama campaign in Virginia will actually support excluding the votes of military service personnel because they were not provided timely ballots.”