Record turnout in Afghanistan election suggests that the Taliban lost

There will be some amount of fraud discovered, but if voter turnout was really 60 percent, as unidentified Independent Election Commission officials tell The New York Times, that’s a victory in itself. We won’t know who will replace President Hamid Karzai for weeks, but it appears that the Taliban lost this election pretty badly. For those understandably jaded about the state of democracy in the world, that’s at least a glimmer of hope to start out the week.