They're Trying to Steal the Election Again And They May Be Succeeding

...this is true in more ways than I can count.

Kevin Drum links to a Greg Palast article about the pre-election schemes the Republicans have used to pre-steal or suppress up to 4.5 million votes.

TAPPED is reporting that the vile robo-calling scheme is, in fact, working. (In case you haven't heard about it, this is the thing that the Republicans are doing -- in multiple states -- where they call repeatedly, often in the middle of the night, with a message whose opening makes it sound like it's the Democrat behind the calls. Hilzoy has a good piece with the basic information & links to more here.) Of course the !@#$% MSM isn't reporting it, so people fall for the trick, get pissed, and vote Republican...

Josh Marshall is doing extensive coverage of problems with voting machines and the like; he's also been covering the Robocalling story extensively.

It goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on.

As Patrick Nielsen Hayden put it yesterday:

I’m voting the straight Democratic line. Not because there aren’t Democrats who are hypocrites, cowards, idiots, and fools. But because the Republican Party, nationally and locally, is in 2006 nothing more or less than a criminal conspiracy to destroy our democracy and loot our country. Their candidates, for every office, need to be defeated wherever they run.

Stolen elections and dirty tricks are only one of the many ways in which the Republicans are attempting to destroy our democracy; but it's in the running for the most pernicious. They have undermined the fundamental trust in democracy -- and, I hate to say it, deservedly undermined, since they have made our democracy untrustworthy.

If the Republicans hold on to the House, it will be because they stole the election. Just like they did in 2000. Just as they may have done in 2004.

Of course this simply makes it all the more important to vote, and to vote Democrat: we need not only to win, we need to win by such a large measure that their attempts at theft fail.

So VOTE.

Or, to swipe even more from Making Light, this post by Jim Macdonald, which I am reprinting in its entirety (I hope he can forgive me):

Today it’s important to go to the polls and vote.
Vote straight-ticket Democrat.
A vote for a Republican, any Republican, is a vote for torture.
A vote for a Republican, any Republican, is a vote for corruption.
A vote for a Republican, any Republican, is a vote for cronyism.
A vote for a Republican, any Republican, is a vote against habeas corpus.
A vote for a Republican, any Republican, is a vote against our troops.
A vote for a Republican, any Republican, is a vote against liberty.
A vote for a Republican, any Republican, is a vote against the Constitution.
A vote for a Republican, any Republican, is a vote against being secure in our persons, houses, papers, and effects.
A vote for a Republican, any Republican, is a vote against Social Security.
A vote for a Republican, any Republican, is a vote for “preemptive” war.
A vote for a Republican, any Republican, is a vote for incompetence.
A vote for a Republican, any Republican, is a vote for Bush.
Go out today. Vote Democratic.
Today is the first day of the struggle to take our country back.

Do anything and everything you can. Let's see if we can keep them from stealing the election this time.

The Next Morning: They're going to keep trying, with Montana and Virginia the battlegrounds. (Later: Montana's over.) (I don't know about Montana, but it's worth bearing in mind that the Virginia victory was on top of the multi-pronged efforts of the Republicans to steal that election. (via)) Nevertheless, this morning things are looking pretty good. We have to keep fighting to keep what we've won: but that's a better battle to have.

On to '08!