Because the Democrats took the House and Senate, people ignore the fraud in the 2006 elections. On Bill Maher's Real Time on November 10, actor Rainn WIlson inferred that there was no fraud, saying that if the Democrats lost they'd be out in the streets, implying that there was no fraud and they would be sore losers, and the Republicans aren't protesting.

This simplistic, two-dimensional thinking ignores the fact that there was a lot of fraud: that the margins were larger than the actual numbers indicated, that the Democrats probably lost some races in which more people voted for them. There are people, like Donna Edwards of Maryland, who should probably be in the new congress. This was probably the reason why some Republicans and Rove were overconfident about results. I also believe that George Allen and Conrad Burns did not push for a recount of the "close" Virginia and Montana races because scrutiny might reveal the fraud. They probably came very close to stealing the election and the Senate. Because of the overall results, there may be a sense of complacency that may reduce efforts to correct problems for the 2008 elections. Someone, (I can't remember who and would prefer to quote) recently said that we have to be ahead by a landslide in order to squeak by. I hope these races are challenged and corrected.

I think this is a very big deal. I think it would be good if someone could list all the close races that were probably stolen, like with final vote count, estimate of stolen votes and how (Palast & others, and the data called in) and the difference in make up of the final congress, including numbers of women, people of color, etc, to concretize the hypothesis.