MEDIATION AND POST-ELECTION LITIGATION Aside from cost, protracted litigation risks alienating the electorate.63 The public may be satisfied when election controversies are decided quickly and resolutely in court, but they become less enamored when litigation drags on for months and months, particularly if an elected seat remains vacant as a result. But more than practical concerns surface: when elections are decided in courts, voters come to believe that they lack voice. Given the dismal state of voter participation in elections in this country,64 protracted and habitual litigation poses a real risk to the franchise. A further reason litigation is problematic in post-election disputes is the issue of courts' relationships with the political process. Time and again, judges in election law cases note a profound hesitance to enter the "political thicket." As Justice Frankfurter wrote in Colegrove v. Green in 1946, "[i]t is hostile to a democratic system to involve the judiciary in the politics of the people."65 What is more, scholars have noted that judges may hesitate to impose remedies in the election context in which even minor corrections can have broad, systemic implications.66 . Courts are also awkward places to resolve post-election disputes in cases that lack statutory guidance. When state election statutes compel judicial review, those statutes are often silent when it comes to substantive guidelines on how courts should proceed. 67 As a result, courts often have to choose (finding a manual recount in Minnesota cost counties a total of $460,000 and a manual and machine recount combined cost the state of Washington $1.16 million). 63 Richard L. Hasen, The Untimely Death a/Bush v. Gore, 60 STAN. L. REv. 1, 5-6 (2007) ("Bush v. Gore's main legacy has been to increase the amount of election-related litigation. As election law has become a political strategy, it threatens to further undermine public confidence in the electoral process. No lemonade, only lemons."). 64 A study of voter turnout since 1945 listed the United States at No. 138 (out of 169) in a ranking of countries votes to voting age population ratio. See Voter Turnout Rates from a Comparative Perspective, available at http://www.idea.int/publications/vtluploadNoter%20tumout.pdf. 65 Colegove v. Green, 328 U.S. 549,553-54 (1946). 66 See Developments in the Law: Voting and Democracy, VII. Election Administration: Judicial Review and Remedial Deterrence, 119 HARV. L. REv. 1188, 1191 (2006) ("[j]udges may be deterred from ordering a systemic remedy [in election cases] because it appears more difficult to implement than the remedy in a standard [nonelection] case between individuals."). See also Richard L. Hasen, Judges as Political Regulators: Evidence and Options for Institutional Change, in RACE, REFORM, AND REGULATION OF THE POLITICAL PROCESS: RECURRING PUZZLES IN AMERICAN DEMOCRACY (Guy-Uriel Charles, Heather K. Gerken & MichaelS. Kang eds., 2011 ). 67 Huefner, supra note 24, at 277 (citing Developments in the Law-Elections, supra note 21, at 1311 (noting that election contest statutes provide "little guidance as to the grounds that are cognizable")). 339 HeinOnline -- 27 Ohio St. J. on Disp. Resol. 339 2012