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Republicans have been complaining about voter fraud for years despite the voluminous evidence suggesting that such fraud is close to nonexistent in the United States. But it’s not totally nonexistent, especially among committed partisans accustomed to running hardball campaigns, and evangelical conservatives now say they have the goods on a genuine case of voter fraud. It happened at….a meeting of evangelical conservatives this weekend:

In back-and-forth emails, Protestant fundamentalist leaders who attended — most of them backing former House Speaker Newt Gingrich to be the anti-Romney candidate — are accusing Catholic participants of conniving to rig the vote. They said they were conned into leaving after the second ballot on Saturday. They said pro-Santorum participants held a third ballot which Mr. Santorum won with more than 70 percent of the vote — far higher than the nine-vote margin he won on the first ballot. ….Now, a prominent evangelical political organizer is saying to others confidentially he has evidence that in a least one instance a participant was seen writing Mr. Santorum’s name on four separate ballots and putting them in the ballot box.

Of course, what’s really weird here is that there’s not much reason for Catholics to rig this vote since Newt Gingrich is also Catholic. But I guess once you get in the habit of yelling about voter fraud, it’s hard to stop.