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Yes, just like all other federal, state, and local government employees, they go along.  Rogues rarely draw government retirement benefits.

I disagree with the statement about LE examiners not having unfettered power.  Even though he said they cannot DQ someone based on his report, my polygrapher and myself are not stupid. If someone fails the polygraph, they will not get hired.  He is unchecked in the sense that he has the sole power as to whether or not someone proceeds to next step of the process.

Think about it like this, all the other stages of selection are for the most part fair and are decided pretty much on your qualifications and background.

1st Step: A written exam.  In that exam you control your fate as to whether or not you move on, you don't get a 90 and then they say "well, you aren't moving forward".  Now granted, some places do a rank system based on your score and in that sense studying harder will give you a higher score and automatically ranked means you move on to next step regardless of anything else or anyone.  In this agency, our tests were pass/fail so I passed the exam and I moved on.

2nd Step (depending where you are applying to): An interview, again you control your fate.  Yes the panel decides whether you move on or not, but if YOU and ONLY YOU present yourself well, you know you will move on.

3rd Step: PT test for alot of places (not for this last agency I took the poly for), if you are in shape you will automatically move on to next phase. Pretty simple and fair.

4th Step: Polygraph, Your fate here no matter what you do is LARGELY out of your hands.  You have to agree on this, no matter what you do or say or your background, this is completely out of your hands as it was in my case.  I told the truth and from there could only hope I passed.  It is here where the unchecked power of the polygrapher makes his own decision based on his own testing or reasons.  You have no say in it.  Please don't say "well, if you tell the truth, you do!" because even if you tell the truth you can still fail. 

5th Step: BI.  Now at this point we are back to having some control over your fate.  If you have a solid background and even made it to the point of a BI odds are you are good to go.  I never failed a BI.  This is where alot of people get jammed up because of the lies they might have mentioned on an application.  However, if you are a solid guy and know you are, then once you get to the BI you know you have nothing to worry about.  Granted some agencies are so small that sometimes the hiring panel will pass you up because there are a ton of good applicants but at least here you can have some control as to whether or not you will pass.

6th step: Med/Psych.  Medical is pretty easy, if you have no problems you once again control if you pass or fail.  Psych can get a little complicated but in regards to that again, you can control if you pass or not since the questions have standardized responses (i.e. if you saying you are answering that you have thought about killing yourself, it is your fault alone that you failed).

I guess all I'm trying to say this is, out of all these little steps, the polygraph is the only one where it seems chance has a greater say as to whether you pass than merit or background.