Responsibility for overseeing the implementation of election law typically resides with partisan officials, many with public stakes in the election outcome.

Presidents are elected not by direct popular vote but by 538 members of the Electoral College.

A human being tends to believe that the mood of the moment, be it troubled or blithe, peaceful or stormy, is the true, native, and permanent tenor of his existence.

In the House, Republican prospects have been buoyed by several successful rounds of redistricting, which have sharply reduced the number of competitive seats and given the Republicans a national advantage of at least a dozen seats.

With the parties at virtual parity and the ideological gulf between them never greater, the stakes of majority control of Congress are extremely high.

But presidential approval also became a surrogate measure of national unity and patriotism.

Knowledge of the soul would unfailingly make us melancholy if the pleasures of expression did not keep us alert and of good cheer.