Here are the facts, ma'am:In the 2008 election, no fewer than:

• 767,023 provisional ballots were cast and not counted;
• 1,451,116 ballots were "spoiled," not counted;
• 488,136 absentee ballots were mailed in, but not counted.

Add it up: in the last presidential election, no fewer than 2,706,275 ballots were cast—and never counted. I have not included a quarter million (251,936) provisional ballots counted only in part (that is, for some offices).

That's the official number I've calculated from the records of the US Election Assistance Commission.

Approximately three million votes flushed away are ugly enough. But it gets worse.

In addition to the roughly three million ballots cast and not counted, no fewer than:

• 2,383,587 would-be voters had their registrations rejected;
• 491,952 voters already registered were wrongly purged from the rolls; and
• 320,000 properly registered voters were simply turned away from the polls when they tried to vote, mostly for not having IDs acceptable to a poll worker.

Add it up again and the total grows to no fewer than 5,901,814 legitimate votes and voters tossed out of the count. Let's call it the Missing Six Million.

Karl Rove, when he was senior advisor to President George W. Bush, summed it up perfectly:

"We are beginning to look like we have elections like those run in countries where the guys in charge are, you know, colonels in mirrored sunglasses."

You might think Rove is complaining here about Obama, but I suspect Rove's boasting about his own accomplishments under Mr. Bush.

For strategist Karl Rove, six million missing ballots just isn't enough. Through several front organizations and affiliates, Rove and his comrades have launched a campaign making brilliant use of the tactics originating from the Red Scare and the War on Terror. Now, instead of the communist lurking under your bed or the al-Qaeda sleeper cell next door, they've created a new monster to fear, to hunt, and to destroy: the Fraudulent Voter.

There aren't any, of course. Or, to be accurate, so few you can literally count them on your fingers—about six in any year, not six million—half a dozen jerks convicted of voting illegally. In the whole country. But in Rove's echo chamber of fear, in the Voter-Fraud Hysteria Factory, these six become so threatening and dangerous that they will be used to take away the vote from six million.

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From Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps by Greg Palast (7 Stories Press 2012).