I must say, I've been flagging most election-related threads unless they're clearly hacker-related (statistical anaylis, integrity of voter data etc.).

This is one of the most bilious elections that I remember and although I'm interested to hear the spectrum of views on HN as a general matter I'm depressed by the likelihood that the discussion would just degenerate into a flamefest. I'd rather not see friends and fellow HNers slinging mud at each other, because heaven knows there's enough of it on the rest of the internet. Website comments on political matters make me question the whole premise of democracy :-(