For related articles and more information, please visit OCA’s Politics and Democracy page.

The Republican Party could steal the 2012 US Presidential election with relative ease.

Six basic factors make this year’s theft a possibility:

1. The power of corporate money, now vastly enhanced by the US Supreme Court’s Citizens’ United decisions;

2. The Electoral College, which narrows the number of votes needed to be moved to swing a presidential election;

3. The systematic disenfranchisement of—according to the Brennan
Center—ten million or more citizens, most of whom would otherwise be
likely to vote Democratic. More than a million voters have also been
purged from the rolls in Ohio, almost 20% of the total vote count in
2008;

4. The accelerating use of electronic voting machines, which make
election theft a relatively simple task for those who control them,
including their owners and operators, who are predominantly Republican;

5. The GOP control of nine of the governorships in the dozen swing
states that will decide the outcome of the 2012 campaign; and,

6. The likelihood that the core of the activist “election protection”
community that turned out in droves to monitor the vote for Barack
Obama in 2008 has not been energized by his presidency and is thus
unlikely to work for him again in 2012.

Winning a fair and reliable electoral system can be achieved only with a massive grassroots upheaval.

The power of money is now enshrined by the infamous Citizens United
decision. In at least 90% of our Congressional races and at least 80% of
our US Senate races, the candidate who spends the most money wins.

From the presidency to the local level, our elections—and thus control of our government—are dominated by cash.