Even more egregious was the Indiana House race in 1984. On election night, the incumbent Democrat Frank McCloskey appeared to have won a narrow victory of 72 votes. But after a correction was made in one county, it turned out his Republican opponent, Richard McIntyre, had won by 34 votes.

McIntyre was certified the winner -- which is when the trouble usually starts for a Republican.

Again, a majority Democrat House refused to seat the certified winner in a close election. I'm sure it was just a coincidence that the winner was a Republican.

Consequently, Indiana performed yet another recount of the entire district, which again showed that Republican McIntyre was the winner -- this time by 418 votes. Now he was really asking for it. The nerve of this guy! Hey, buddy, do you mind? We're trying to throw an election over here!

As The Washington Post reported at the time: There were "no allegations of fraud" in the recount and 90 percent of ballot disqualifications had been agreed to "by election commissions dominated by Democrats."

So naturally the House refused to seat the Republican even though he had received the most votes (hereinafter referred to as "the winner"). The House proceeded to conduct its own recount. (If you haven't detected a pattern by this point, please ask your doctor if Prilosec is right for you.)

This time, instead of ordering the district to hold another election, the Democratic House saved all concerned a lot of time and money by simply declaring Democrat Frank McCloskey the winner by four votes.

The vote-theft most like Minnesota this year was the infamous 2004 gubernatorial election in Washington State. The Republican won the race on election night, but ballots favoring the Democrat kept being "discovered" until the Democrat finally eked out a majority. At that point, the recount was immediately halted and the Democrat declared the victor.

You would have to go back to Reconstruction to find an election that was stolen by the Republicans this way, but it's all in a day's work for the Democrats.

That's why they were so testy about the 2000 Florida election. It was the one time in the last century Republicans wouldn't let Democrats steal an election they lost by less than a thousand votes.

No matter how many times Democrats steal elections, Republicans keep thinking the next time will be different. Minnesota is famously clean, isn't it? It must different. It's not different. It's still the Democrats.