"what's worse is that we haven't done much to fix it in the intervening six years."
You are so right. The Republicans haven't done much to fix the problem, but the Dims have learned from their mistakes. I'm not convinced that there wasn't a lot of "hanky-panky" with votes in the 2006 elections. Too many influential Republicans lost their seats this past election.
I think that between an unpopular war and constant high-profile scandals, we screwed ourselves. Maybe there was some vote tampering, but I don't think that that was really necessary.