WASHINGTON -- Following Barack Obama's re-election, accusations from some quarters have held that his campaign stole the election through vote fraud. Others claim no vote fraud occurred, and that the election victory resulted from the Obama campaign's vastly superior get-out-the-vote effort. One RedState diarist has even gone so far as to announce that commenters complaining that the election was stolen will be banned from the site.

With all of the swirling allegations, where does the truth lie? While there have been many proven cases of vote fraud in previous elections, and many credible allegations of fraud in this election cycle, was the cumulative total of all fraud sufficient to throw the election for Obama? After all, Obama's team ran an intensely focused, highly organized get-out-the-vote effort. Republican efforts were, by comparison, disorganized and nowhere near as comprehensive or sophisticated.

Still, members of the president's team did everything possible to rig the game in their favor. They took liberties with the law Republicans would never dare attempt and obstructed voter-integrity efforts at every turn, while the vast political-media-entertainment-education-union-nonprofit complex went all in to promote Obama's narrative.

Democrats and their media allies also engaged in what has fairly been described as a dishonest and "vicious" campaign to discredit the Republican nominee while steadfastly shielding the administration from its many scandals. Any of these could have sunk Obama's reelection prospects had the media reported them with the enthusiasm they showed in attacking and spreading disinformation about Romney.

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When it comes to outright vote fraud, however, let's examine first those allegations with the greatest potential for skewing election results.

100 percent vote for Obama

In some inner city precincts, Obama garnered between 98 and 100 percent of the vote. This was most frequently noted about Philadelphia, Pa., and Cleveland, Ohio. Incredulous observers stated, "Third world dictators don't even get 99 percent of the vote." Rush Limbaugh quipped, "I mean, the last guy that got this percentage of the vote was Saddam Hussein, and the people that didn't vote for him got shot."

But these statements confuse turnout with votes. In communist countries like Saddam's Iraq, every voter is indeed required to vote for the one choice on the ballot, and participation is close to 100 percent all the time. However, in U.S. elections, turnout has run at about 60 percent for the past three presidential races.

Cuyahoga County, Ohio, encompasses Cleveland and surrounding areas. Overall, President Obama received 69.32 percent of the county vote, while Romney received 29.55 percent. The county lists 927,996 registered voters and there were 650,387 votes cast. Over 40 percent of these were absentee ballots. Turnout was 70 percent.

There were more than 100 Cleveland inner city, largely African-American precincts where Obama received 98-100 percent of the vote. But this amounted to about 60,000 votes – less than 10 percent of the total cast. Now ask yourself how many Romney voters you would expect to see in those locations. In 2004, George W. Bush received 11 percent of the black vote nationwide and that was a recent high for Republicans.

If we make the heroic assumption that Mitt Romney would have received 11 percent against Obama at those 100 poll locations in the absence of vote fraud, it would amount to 6,600 votes, including both absentee and Election Day ballots. Obama won Ohio by 103,481 votes.

In 2008, John McCain received 4 percent of the black vote nationwide. In Cuyahoga County he fared about the same as Romney, obtaining 29.96 percent of the vote. Similarly, in those same inner city precincts, he got few, and in some cases, no votes. Voter turnout in 2008 was 60.52 percent. A 4 percent vote for Romney in those locations would have earned him about 2,400 votes.

But comparing the results to 2008 is not to suggest that 2008 was fraud-free. It definitely was not, as evidenced by the many criminal complaints and convictions against ACORN. Even then, however, enthusiasm for the first black candidate, coupled with a wholesale news blackout on his unsavory, radical heritage and another good organizing effort, ensured his victory. There is compelling evidence, however, that he stole the primary in 2008.

Despite all this, Romney even getting 4 percent would have been surprising. Prior to the election, an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll indicated Romney's support among blacks was zero.

A similar situation obtained in Philadelphia. While overall Romney received 14 percent of the vote to Obama's 85 percent in Philadelphia County, a typical outcome for Republicans in big cities, in 59 Philadelphia precincts he received no votes at all. The total number of votes cast in those precincts was under 20,000. Applying the same methodology as above, an extremely optimistic 11 percent for Romney would only have garnered 2,200 votes while a 4 percent vote would have gained 800. Obama won the state by 287,866 votes.

Does this mean that vote fraud didn't occur in these locations? No, but if it did, it was likely not enough to throw the election. One issue that warrants a closer look, however, is absentee ballots. In Ohio, 29.5 percent of the vote came through absentee ballots in 2008 (2012 results are not finalized yet). In Cuyahoga County in 2012, absentee ballots made up 40.5 percent of the total.

According to the New York Times, use of absentee ballots nationwide has tripled since 1980 and now stands at about 20 percent of total ballots cast. The Times notes, "While fraud in voting by mail is far less common than innocent errors, it is vastly more prevalent than the in-person voting fraud that has attracted far more attention, election administrators say."

Absentee ballots are particularly vulnerable to vote fraud. In one notorious recent case in upstate Troy, N.Y., eight local Democrat politicians were indicted and four have pleaded guilty to falsifying absentee ballots. This was a local election and these politicians won their seats before getting caught. Anthony DeFiglio, a Democratic committeeman who pleaded guilty, said that absentee ballot fraud was a "normal political tactic":

[It is] an ongoing scheme and it occurs on both sides of the aisle. The people who are targeted live in low-income housing and there is a sense that they are a lot less likely to ask any questions... What appears as a huge conspiracy to nonpolitical persons is really a normal political tactic.

Bob Mirch, the former Republican legislator who first discovered this fraud, said, "It's an insider game. It takes insiders to do it, and I think it takes insiders to catch those who try to steal the election. … It's easy to do it and yes, it's easy to not get caught …" Frank LaPosta, a former Troy, N.Y., city council president said he got run out of the Democratic Party for speaking out against the vote fraud.

Did fraudulent absentee ballots throw the election in Ohio this year? If there were significant absentee ballot fraud, one would expect to see a much greater ratio of absentee ballots submitted by Democrats. In Cuyahoga County, 43.3 percent of the vote for Obama was via absentee ballot, compared to 40.9 percent for Romney – a measurable difference, but not enough to raise red flags. The ballots would have to be individually examined to determine the extent of absentee ballot fraud. This could be a worthwhile investigation perhaps, but is beyond the scope of this report.

Just the same, it is clear that Democrats are up to something at inner city polls. Their eye-popping – and illegal – stonewalling of poll watchers strongly suggests nefarious activity. The left's nationwide campaign to discredit voter integrity efforts as "voter suppression" and their obstinate battle against voter ID laws only serve to reinforce this impression. Following are a few examples of real voter suppression and threats to voter integrity that occurred in 2012:

Motor voter

Another important factor in modern American elections is the National Voter Registration Act. "Motor Voter" was passed in 1993 under the signature of President Bill Clinton. One of Barack Obama's early legal cases was against Illinois Gov. Jim Edgar, a Republican who refused to enforce the new law because he feared it would open the door to widespread voter fraud. Obama, in concert with the Clinton Justice Department, ACORN, Project Vote and the League of Women Voters, sued the state, which eventually gave up the fight.

Motor Voter requires state and local government offices – most notably motor vehicle and welfare agencies – to provide voter registration services. Successive lawsuits by ACORN, Project Vote and others have forced state agencies to become de facto registration drives. Because these agencies serve largely low-income voters, it is in essence a taxpayer-funded voter registration program for Democrats. This was the original intent and goal of this legislation, articulated bluntly in a book titled "Why Americans Don't Vote," by Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven.

Most people are unaware that Motor Voter was conceived over the course of 10 years, planned and authored by Cloward and Piven, the notorious socialists who gave America the Cloward-Piven Strategy of Manufactured Crisis. Using the now-familiar excuse that low-income people need government assistance for even the most menial tasks, the law facilitated mass low-income voter registration with virtually no documentation required. Motor Voter provided the opening for ACORN, Project Vote and other such groups to engage in the massive voter registration fraud that has become a fixture in modern American elections.

Section 8 of the law requires that voter rolls be maintained. However, the maintenance requirements actually prevent states from cleaning the rolls, because they are required to attempt to contact voters multiple times over multiple election cycles before finally removing names. As a result, nationwide the voter rolls are in shambles. This was almost certainly Cloward and Piven's covert goal: Create a crisis to provide the solution you want.

ACORN's Project Vote took up Cloward and Piven's work once the law was passed. Obama cut his teeth community organizing for Project Vote in 1992. Today, Piven serves on the Board of Project Vote, and Obama named his 2012 GOTV campaign, Project Vote.

Democrats and vote fraud

If there is a "ground zero" for vote fraud in modern America, it would be the inner city.

Indeed, according to Paul Herrison of the Center for American Politics at the University of Maryland, "Most incidents of wider-scale vote fraud reportedly occur in inner cities, which are largely populated by minority groups." Some liberals, he said, even feel they are justified in committing vote fraud, "because the poor and dispossessed have so little political clout, 'extraordinary measures [for example, stretching the absentee ballot or registration rules] are required to compensate.'"

If Democrats are in fact engaging in systemic vote fraud in inner city polls, what impact might that have? For the sake of argument, suppose that either through absentee ballot fraud or some other mechanism, Democrats in Cleveland were able to gain just 2,000 votes. In Cuyahoga County, that would have represented 0.44 percent of the total vote for Obama. Extrapolated to the entire state, it would provide an additional 12,000 votes. If done nationwide, it would mean 280,000 votes.

Obama won by 3.5 million votes, so while insufficient in itself to throw the presidential election, in closer races, such efforts could decide the day. In 2000, Bush won with a margin of only 500 votes. Going into the election, both candidates knew it would be close. There is little reason to doubt that Democrats at least attempted to boost their chances through vote fraud, as that is the only logical explanation for their extreme efforts to thwart voter integrity measures in state after state.

The actual level of vote fraud that occurs is extremely difficult to measure. Worse, a consent decree stemming from a 1981 New Jersey case, which has been repeatedly reauthorized by a Democrat judge, prevents the Republican National Committee from even examining possible voter fraud. Incredibly, in a 1987 revision, the judge explicitly prohibited the RNC from engaging in any form of "ballot integrity, ballot security or other efforts to prevent or remedy vote fraud." RNC leader Reince Priebus even took the unprecedented step of stating publicly on CNN, "Democrats know they benefit from election fraud."

Finally, whatever the actual level of voter fraud that occurred in the 2012 election, the potential for future fraud is truly staggering. Pew Research Center published a report revealing election rolls in a shambles nationwide. They found:

24 million invalid or inaccurate voter registrations

1.8 million deceased voters

2.75 million registered in multiple states.

As noted earlier, Cloward and Piven's Motor Voter law is responsible for much of this mess.

A North Carolina group, the Voter Integrity Project, found close to 30,000 dead voters still on the rolls in North Carolina, a state Obama won by only 14,000 votes in 2008. Project Director Jay DeLancey said, "Mainly, what we're concerned about is the potential [for fraud]. Since there is no voter ID law in North Carolina, anybody can walk in and claim to be anyone else."

Allen West campaign

Vote fraud was almost certainly the culprit with Rep. Allen West's Florida loss this November, as was Norm Coleman's loss to comedian Al Franken in his 2008 U.S. Senate race. Franken ultimately won by 312 votes, but election officials, led by ACORN-connected Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, rejected 12,000 absentee ballots.

Likewise, the West campaign lost its congressional race under highly questionable circumstances.

Initial confusion surrounded counting a two-page ballot as two separate votes, leading to the erroneous conclusion that 141 percent of registered voters cast votes. The actual total votes cast were 123,750 against a total registration of 175,554. Election Supervisor Gertrude Walker engaged in activities many analysts say were blatantly illegal:

West maintained a 2,000-vote lead in the county until Walker made a recount of early voting ballots. Following the recount, West was suddenly behind by 2,400 votes – a net change of 4,400 votes. Early voting totals were 37,123, so that recount represented a 12% swing.

Polls were illegally locked following the election, preventing public witness of tabulation procedures.

Many early voting ballots were tabulated twice by Walker staff members.

Forced by court order to a recount, St. Lucie elections officials failed to meet the 12 noon, Nov. 18 deadline, and were thus able to certify the original partial recount, which showed Murphy ahead of West by 2,146 votes.

West's team sought a court order to impound voting machines and ballots in Palm Beach County District 18 to maintain integrity of ballots prior to an anticipated recount, but were denied by Circuit Judge David F. Crow.

Illegal alien voting

Glenn Cook of the Las Vegas Review Journal reported in early November that illegal aliens were being pressured, even threatened, by Culinary Union Local 226, to register and vote. Cook related the story of two illegals who told him about it. In Florida, an NBC investigative report found that illegals were registered to vote and indeed have been voting.

This year, immigration officials uncovered a massive document fraud ring operating in Baltimore that has provided thousands of fraudulent driver’s licenses, green cards and Social Security cards to illegals for years. Such documents are apparently easy and inexpensive to obtain.

DHS believes about one-third of illegals in the U.S. are people who have simply overstayed their visas. Many of these people could have obtained driver's licenses while still legal. Since licenses typically expire after a much longer period, it is reasonable to assume many of these people could be registered to vote.

Because of the National Voter Registration Act (Motor Voter), anyone who obtains a new driver's license is automatically registered to vote. Furthermore, the NVRA does not require voting officials to verify proof of citizenship when people register. In states where illegals can obtain driver's licenses, including California, Washington, New Mexico and Utah, they are likely already registered to vote. How many illegals actually vote on a systematic basis is not known, but many do.

In fact, Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler found that about 5,000 Colorado illegals voted in the 2010 midterm elections and 12,000 were registered to vote. In 2012, he sent letters to 3,900 people identified as potentially illegal voters. Gessler's office intends to conduct a thorough statewide analysis once all results are official.

These illegal voters should obviously not be ignored. They could spell the difference between victory and defeat in many cases.

One aspect of Colorado's voting history merits especially close scrutiny. Colorado has an approximately equal number of registered Republicans (1,157,373) and Democrats (1,151,198). Historically, unaffiliated voters in Colorado have numbered roughly the same. Between 2008 and 2012, however, their numbers grew by a whopping 23 percent, some 248,000 people. Unaffiliated voters, now numbering 1.3 million, are the largest single voting bloc in Colorado. Who are these people?

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, between 2000 and 2010 Colorado's population grew by 728,000. Fully 42 percent of these were Hispanic and almost all, 303,000, were of Mexican descent. A Gallup poll shows that Hispanics in general (52 percent), but immigrants especially (60 percent), tend to identify as independent. Yet most affiliate with Democrats (52 percent) versus Republicans (23 percent).

How many of these were illegal, and how many of them voted? A study on illegal immigrant demographics by the Center for Immigration Studies estimates Colorado's illegal population at 167,000, so to pin Obama's Colorado win on illegals alone would require almost all of these to have registered and voted.

According to the Colorado Secretary of State's office, Coloradan voters must show a state-issued ID if they have one; if not, a utility bill or Social Security number will suffice. It is likely that some illegals voted and could have contributed to Obama's victory, but it is unreasonable to assume a large scale illegal vote would have gone unnoticed. Gessler's observation of a few thousand illegal voters is much more realistic.

Obama's Colorado win was, however, secured with the unaffiliated vote, and many of these were Hispanic. According to Latino Decisions, an election eve poll claimed that 87 percent of Latinos in Colorado supported Obama over Romney. Nationwide, they found that the GOP was supported by only 25 percent of Hispanics. An October 2012 Pew Hispanic Center poll showed only 21 percent of Hispanics supporting Romney to 69 percent for Obama.

Despite Republican post-election hand-wringing, this is not likely to change much with any kind of concessions to the Hispanic community.

The reasons are straightforward and not dependent upon immigration reform. According to the CIS study, 57 percent of illegals in the U.S. live at or near poverty. Granted amnesty, would this group suddenly embrace the entitlement-reform-minded Republican Party en masse? Who would get credit for amnesty in their minds, Democrats, or the Republicans they dragged to the table? The very act of Republicans "conceding" to Democrats on amnesty and immigration "reform" declares Democrats the victors.

More relevant are the sentiments among legal immigrants and Hispanic U.S. citizens. According to CIS, well over 60 percent of legal immigrants from Mexico and Central American countries – i.e. the vast majority of Hispanic immigrants – live near or in poverty. Among U.S. born Hispanics, 50 percent of households with children are led by single mothers, 55 percent of households with children utilize welfare, and 45 percent of all Hispanic households pay no income tax.

They will probably not be voting Republican anytime soon.

Hispanic views on political ideology are also revealing. According to the Pew Research Center, 55 percent have a poor opinion of capitalism, while only 32 percent have a positive opinion. Many more, 44 percent, have a positive opinion of socialism! For all these reasons it is highly unlikely to see any major Hispanic movement toward Republicans no matter what Republicans do.

Finally, a large proportion of the approximately 1 million legal immigrants arriving in the U.S. annually are low-skilled individuals from impoverished nations around the world. Many of these immediately become welfare recipients. Throughout the nation, 47.4 percent of all immigrants live at or near poverty. America is essentially importing poverty. Who benefits politically from that? The open borders crowd, of course – not Republicans.

Electronic voting machines

There were a number of complaints about electronic voting machines that tallied votes for Democrats despite a Republican vote and a few instances of the opposite case.

Confirmed voter fraud and other abuses

Countless cases of confirmed vote fraud were reported in this cycle and the Obama team repeatedly rode the razor's edge of legality in pushing voters to the polls. Let's look at a few examples:

Patrick Moran, son of longtime U.S. Rep. Jim Moran, was caught on video by James O'Keefe's Veritas Project, telling an undercover journalist how to commit vote fraud.

At an Ohio State University rally during early voting, President Obama urged students to vote early. Democrat-chartered buses lined up to carry students directly from the rally to an early voting site where pizza was served and rap star will.i.am performed. Students were offered "Golden Tickets" wherein they pledged to vote for Obama and provided contact information. Was this a case of vote buying? That's against the law. Similar rallies were held on different campuses throughout Ohio and in other states.

Conservative author and activist David Horowitz described how his mentally disabled brother-in-law, Henry, and 60 others from his facility, were taught to vote for Obama. Over Thanksgiving dinner, Henry told him, "Obama saved me… I voted for him for president and now he's saving me."

Vote fraud in northern Virginia

The report that raised the most red flags came from Prince William County, Virginia. Virginia is a swing state with a Republican governor and legislature. It would be solid red except that populous Northern Virginia sits aside Washington, D.C., and is home to many federal government employees.

It also has a burgeoning immigrant population of Hispanics, many of whom are illegal. Prince William County, for example had a population of 9,662 Hispanics in 1990. Over the last 20 years, that population has grown by 743 percent to 81,460 in 2010, accounting for almost 40 percent of Prince William County’s population growth according to the Census Bureau. Census does not distinguish between legal and illegal, but a large proportion of these are undoubtedly illegal. Indeed, Virginia is one of 12 states with the highest illegal alien populations in the country and most reside in Northern Virginia.

Of the many complaints about the election in Prince William, one report really stood out. Dara Fox, a Republican poll watcher certified by the Virginia Board of Elections, and trained in the use of Romney’s ORCA application, reported at least 100 instances of voting irregularities, where the voter should have either been challenged or provided with a provisional vote. These included:

Many people unable to state their name or address on their ID without assistance

Many unable to speak English and could not follow simple directions

Many times upon recording a vote, it was discovered that a vote in that person's name had already been checked off

Many times the voter's age did not match the age of the registered voter, e.g. he/she appeared much younger/older than the person listed on the registration

Several times, Fox observed what appeared to be the same person voting twice, or the same name was called twice, when the [ORCA] app stated that only one voter in the precinct had the stated name

Many times a person who looked Hispanic answered to a name that he/she could barely pronounce – that was obviously some other ethnicity, such as Asian or Middle Eastern.

Every one of these people save one, voted, and none with a provisional ballot.

One person was denied the vote who admitted through an interpreter he was underage, but said he was told he could vote anyway. He was denied the vote only after repeated protests.

In circumstances like this, voters are usually given a provisional ballot. Fox said there should have been hundreds, but at the end of the day, the provisional vote tally was zero out of 2,753 votes at that poll. County statistics bear this out. According to the Prince William County Board of Elections, there were a total of 177,789 votes countywide, but only 196 provisional ballots.

Fox was interviewed on WMAL Radio about her experiences, and the interview prompted many other Virginia poll watchers to call in or comment about similar experiences they had witnessed. Prince William County voting officials conducted a hearing on the issues she raised, and politely listened to her, but reportedly gave much more weight to a Democrat official who complained of "voter suppression." Fox's interview on WMAL can be heard here.

Virginia has minimal ID requirements to vote; a utility bill will suffice. Furthermore, no proof of citizenship is required. If, when filling out a voter registration, one checks the "U.S. Citizen" box, he/she is presumed to be telling the truth. Voting officials said it is nearly impossible to verify citizenship because the federal government will not share its data.

How many people voted at this location that shouldn't have? If the "at least 100" irregularities Dara Fox witnessed were actually fraudulent votes, and if there were no others that she did not witness, then the fraudulent vote rate at this location would have been 3.6 percent. It is likely that there were others, but it is equally likely that some of these were not actually fraudulent.

Hypothetically assume 3.6 percent was correct and reflects the statewide rate. Further assume all fraudulent votes went to Obama. The total vote count in Virginia was 1,971,820 Obama to 1,822,522 Romney, a difference of 149,298 votes. 3.6 percent would have given Obama 70,986 votes, not enough to account for his win; and this is likely an exaggeration of the actual fraudulent vote.

But this does not resolve the issue. As discussed earlier, citizenship on Virginia voter registrations is assumed, not confirmed. If significant numbers of illegals are registering, knowing that election officials cannot check their citizenship status, then many illegal votes are being counted as legitimate. The only way to confidently verify the results of this election would be to investigate the citizenship of every immigrant voter in Virginia.

This would all be resolved however, if Virginia passed stringent photo voter ID laws. To facilitate this in Virginia and other states, the federal government should make its data available so that voting officials in every state can check the naturalization status of immigrants registering to vote much like police agencies access the FBI’s NCIC. Citizens should be required to register with a government-issued photo ID and birth certificate.

This is the best system-wide answer to voter fraud, but would work only if poll workers actually checked voter credentials. Voting lines were up to three hours long in Prince William County and poll workers stopped checking credentials just to move people along. Increasing the number of poll locations and poll workers would relieve the pressure and give poll workers more time to properly check credentials. Questionable voters can always vote with a provisional ballot, which can be checked later when election officials are not under such heavy pressure.

But ultimately, the security of the vote in every state is dependent upon the integrity of people involved. In Democrat-controlled counties particularly, poll officials have been brazenly demonstrating contempt for both the law and the process, while the Democrat political infrastructure nationwide doubles down on efforts to thwart voter integrity measures. Increasingly, their actions call into question the integrity of the entire process.

The ground game

One of the Obama team’s secret weapons was "the Cave," a high-tech data center that constantly evaluated voter and donor information. Time magazine described it as:

a massive data effort that helped Obama raise $1 billion, remade the process of targeting TV ads and created detailed models of swing-state voters that could be used to increase the effectiveness of everything from phone calls and door knocks to direct mailings and social media.

The Romney team had Project ORCA. It was designed to automate strike lists to assist in get-out-the-vote efforts on Election Day. It was a colossal failure.

In Ohio, Republicans supposedly retained a significant component of the infrastructure built in 2004 and credited with George W. Bush's win there. However, they somehow were unaware of, or were not concerned with, the Obama campaign's 120-plus offices, many of which had been in operation since 2008. These focused on get-out-the-vote efforts in key Democrat enclaves. With data obtained via the "Cave," they could efficiently target door-knocking efforts. The result was a heavily favorable Obama turnout, especially in early voting that Ohio Republicans didn't even try to match.

But it goes much further and deeper than that. Growing out of the Colorado Democracy Alliance, which turned Colorado blue in 2006, a vast and deep collection of well-funded organizations have studied "best practices" for winning elections. From rootsHQ:

These organizations are non-profits, advocacy groups, labor unions, and for-profit businesses all with the common goal of bringing evidence-based best practices and technological innovation to elections. Led by researchers and behavioral scientists, these organizations are not only exploring technology in campaigns, but also how voters come to decisions about turning out to vote, and making a decision to support a specific candidate. Certain organizations are solely focused on data while others are focused on field experiments in voter contact. Others are focused on training, while others are focused on media and content. Still others provide overall strategic direction, and another group is focused exclusively on cultivating and managing donors and funding. Through distributed organizations working in close collaboration while supporting candidate campaigns, the progressive movement has created a highly-efficient model for political innovation, resulting in both success at the ballot box as well as long-term capacity development.

This organization has been developing independently and prior to the Obama campaign. The overall effort is dedicated to achieving leftist dominance in politics, and Obama has been able to capitalize on it. Conservatives have no corollary effort. This is what the vast resources of leftist billionaires like George Soros and Peter Lewis bring to the game. While such is not counted as "campaign contributions," it nevertheless has provided a major advantage to Obama.

Conclusion

So is vote fraud real? Yes. Did it occur in this election? Yes. Was it enough to steal the election? In reality, although no single instance or aspect of vote fraud was likely enough to tip the election for Obama, the aggregate of their corrupt activities – including illegal campaign donations, taking advantage of states without voter ID requirements, military ballots delivered too late, as well as the laundry list of elements identified in this report, may well have been.

Election 2012 provides a powerful justification for, at a minimum, enacting strong voter ID laws throughout the nation and a repeal of the most anti-Democratic voting legislation ever written, the National Voter Registration Act.

Protecting the integrity of the vote will prevent election theft and give voters more confidence in clean elections, a confidence that is today justifiably lacking.

Moreover, even had there been no vote fraud at all, the Obama administration stole this election: By virtue of the media monopoly Obama and his team enjoy, they have been able to lie, deceive and suppress damaging information throughout Obama's entire first term. They have taken countless billions in taxpayer dollars to enrich their friends and union allies under the pretext of "stimulating" the economy and conducted a campaign of unprecedented viciousness against the Republican candidate while protesting vociferously in those few instances when Obama received richly deserved criticism.

The media provided perhaps the greatest in-kind benefit to the, Obama re-election effort, providing Democrats an advantage of countless billions in biased reporting; suppressing news unflattering to Democrats while exposing or even contriving stories damaging to Republicans and mischaracterizing their positions, while uncritically promoting the Democrat narrative:

The networks suppressed facts surrounding Benghazi-gate, leading moderate Democrat commentator Pat Caddell to label the media "the enemy of America."

The mass media have been, with a few notable exceptions, largely silent on the "Fast and Furious" DOJ gunrunning scandal responsible for the deaths of two Americans and countless Mexicans. Eric Holder has been able to successfully deflect calls for an independent investigation of Fast and Furious because the media offers no pressure.

CBS withheld its knowledge of the Petraeus affair until after the election to save the administration embarrassment

The administration withheld a damning food stamp report showing the biggest monthly increase in a year, until well after the election

Unions provide armies of on-the-ground volunteers to assist with get-out-the-vote, while countless foundations legitimize the leftist narrative. The top 115 leftist foundations control more than $100 billion in assets, vastly more than the ad hoc collection of philanthropists that support conservative issues, and focus their dollars in a collective effort to win. The left has become a virtual industry that promotes the Democrat narrative, feeds off the government at the taxpayers' expense, ridicules vote fraud and seeks to expand voting opportunities that capitalize on the Democrats' better organizing capability and their huge pool of bought-and-paid-for voters.

As Lyndon Johnson said following enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, "I'll have those n*&^%*s voting Democratic for the next 200 years."

It is the Curley Effect writ large, i.e. destroying wealth to create dependency, and has grown the dependent class to almost 50 percent of America's population. With the coming amnesty, that voter base will exceed 50 percent, guaranteeing the "permanent progressive majority" they seek.

Did Obama win with any kind of mandate? No. Despite all the vote fraud, despite a mass media that buried scandal after scandal while vilifying Obama's opponents, despite a massive and growing welfare state buying off voters by the millions with endless giveaways, despite a political narrative unrelenting in its viciousness and dishonesty, and despite a weak, poorly articulated message from a Republican candidate with few discernible bedrock positions, Obama won with only a 3 percent margin.

Sign WND's petition urging Congress to investigate fraud and abuse in America's election system!

Note: Media wishing to interview James Simpson for this story should contact us here.

What role, if any, did vote fraud play in election? None, the American political system is as clean as a whistle

Little, because both sides are guilty of fudging the rules and skirting the law

The Republicans would have done worse without committing systematic fraud

It played a decisive role in the presidential election, robbing the real winner of victory

Each election gets a little dirtier – and something needs to be done about it

There's enough doubt about the fairness of the election that is causing Americans to lose confidence in the vote

What's disturbing is that all of the anomalies helped the Democrats

Democrats are fine with cheating and law-breaking, as James O'Keefe demonstrated in his videos

It is abundantly clear now that presidential elections in the U.S. are rigged in favor of Democrats

The election was stolen – pure and simple

We may never have a free and fair election again in America if we don't start exposing abuses and prosecuting them

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