Dean,
I'm sure Silona will have more to say since this is her project, but I think the messaging here may not have been completely clear about the relationship between LOTV and CivicSpace/Drupal.
The League of Technical Voters has a specific set of requirements that Silona's defined and documented. CivicSpace, Drupal, and CiviCRM don't have all the functionality specified for the LOTV build. The goal of the lockin is to build out that functionality.
Drupal does actually do quite a lot, and can be extended with plugin modules that extend its capabilities. Moreover, for whatever requirements it doesn't handle, there's the potential to develop additional modules. It does have the potential to support a diverse set of organizations and requirements, as David suggests. I don't think of it as a monolithic app in the sense you mean, but a flexible framework. The fact that it's open source, with a large community of developers, enchances that flexibility as well as its ongoing support.
After the lockin, Drupal's capabilities will have been extended a bit more through modules that add the functionality Silona's seeking, which will then be available to the community of Drupal users.
None of these tools is perfect, but we believe this is a good approach to system development.
Hope this helps clarify...
best,
Jon L.
--
Jon Lebkowsky
web strategy | social networks | user experience
weblog: http://weblogsky.com
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]