It's hard to win elections...

.... when you're down by more than 4 million before the first polls open. Greg Palast has an unsettling report called "How they stole the mid-term election" available today. And yes, he's talking about the 2006 elections... you know the ones going on today? He uses the past tense because his investigations reveal that the Republicans have been busy stealing this election for the last two years while the Democrats were snoozing.

Here’s how the 2006 mid-term election was stolen.

Note the past tense. And I’m not kidding.

Theft #1: Registrations gone with the wind

On January 1, 2006, while America slept off New Year’s Eve hangovers, a new federal law crept out of the swamps that has devoured 1.9 million votes, overwhelmingly those of African-Americans and Hispanics.

Theft #2: Turned Away - the ID game

A legion of pimple-faced Republicans with Blackberries loaded with lists of new voters is assigned to challenge citizens in heavily Black and Hispanic (i.e. Democratic) precincts to demand photo ID that perfectly matches registration data.

Theft #3: Votes Spoiled Rotten

The nasty little secret of US elections is that three million ballots are cast in national elections but not counted — 3,600,380 not counted in 2004 according to US Election Commission stats.

Officials call it “spoilage.” I call it, “inaugurating Republicans.” Why? According to statisticians working with the US Civil Rights Commission, the chance your vote will “spoil” this way is 900% higher for Black folk and 500% higher for Hispanics than for white voters.

You can read lots more about each of those theft methods at the linked article above. Meanwhile, it seems that similar hanky panky has been going on in Arizona all year, where polls are indicating some very strong Democratic showings in key races, but the lack of ability to vote may still snatch victory from the jaws of defeat and voter disapproval for the GOP.

In Arizona, students can't register to vote unless they provide an Arizona-approved birth certificate and multiple proofs of their current address. In-state students who are already registered to vote in one Arizona county must provide proof of U.S. citizenship if they want to reregister in another county.

At Arizona State University in Tempe, with its 63,000 students living on and off campus, voter registration has essentially evaporated....From 5,000 voters registered in six weeks before the 2004 presidential race, the ASU Young Democrats' post-Proposition 200 registration drive has produced little more than 200 new voters in a year and a half.

(all emphasis above mine)

It's Palast's opinion that the Democrats can no longer win any close elections anywhere with only 51 or 52 percent of the vote. He claims that in order to carry election day in any given race, Democrats will need to secure a minimum of 55% of the vote, and even that might not be enough to make up for the voter surpression movements that the GOP has been running all year.

It's enough to make you lose faith in the system. All of the latest polls show a GOP bloodbath in the works today. Count me as one writer who will not be walking around acting surprised tomorrow if the Republicans "miraculously" pull off some huge upset. It won't be an upset at all. I'd love to be proven wrong... you have no idea how much I would love to and I'll be out there celebrating tomorrow night with everyone else if I am. But I can't shake the feeling that every one of the important "close" races is going to suddenly and mysteriously break the Republicans' way by the time the evening is over.