It's bad enough that the Republican Party can't prevent Democrats from voting in its primaries and saddling us with The New York Times' favorite Republican as our presidential nominee. If the Republican Party can't protect an election won by the incumbent U.S. senator in Minnesota, there is no point in donating to the Republican Party.

The day after the November election, Republican Sen. Norm Coleman had won his re-election to the U.S. Senate, beating challenger Al Franken by 725 votes.

Then one heavily Democratic town miraculously discovered 100 missing ballots. And, in another marvel, they were all for Al Franken! It was like a completely evil version of a Christmas miracle.

As strange as it was that all 100 post-election, "discovered" ballots would be for one candidate, it was even stranger that the official time stamp for the miracle ballots printed out by the voting machine on the miracle ballots showed that the votes had been cast on Nov. 2 -- two days before the election.

Democratic election officials in the miracle-ballot county simply announced that their voting machine must have been broken. Don't worry about it -- they were sure those 100 votes for Franken were legit.

Then another 400-odd statistically improbable "corrections" were made in other Democratic strongholds until -- by the end of election week -- Coleman's lead had been whittled down to a mere 215 votes.

Since then, highly irregular counting methods have added to Franken's total bit by bit, to the point that Coleman is now ahead by only 188 votes.

As long as Coleman maintains any lead at all, Republicans don't seem to care that Coleman's advantage is being shrunk by laughable ballot "discoveries" and disreputable standard-switching from precinct to precinct -- depending on which method of counting ballots is most advantageous to Franken.

Consider a few other chilling examples of Democrats thieving their way to victory over the years.

In 1974, Republican Louis Wyman won his race for U.S. Senate in New Hampshire, beating Democrat John Durkin by 355 votes. Durkin demanded a recount -- which went back and forth by a handful of votes until the state's Ballot Law Commission concluded that Wyman had indeed won by (at least) two votes.

Wyman was certified the winner by the New Hampshire secretary of state and was on his way to Washington when ... the overwhelmingly Democratic U.S. Senate refused to seat Wyman.

Despite New Hampshire's certification of Wyman as the winner of the election, this was the post-Watergate Senate, when Democrats could get away with anything -- up to and including a prank known as "President Jimmy Carter."

The U.S. Senate spent months examining disputed ballots from the New Hampshire election. Unable to come up with a method to declare the Democrat the winner that didn't require a guillotine, the Senate forced New Hampshire to hold another election.

It was a breathtaking abuse of power. New Hampshire had certified a winner of its Senate election, but it was a Republican, so the Democratic Senate simply ordered a new election.

Demoralized Republicans stayed away from the race and, this time, the Democrat won the re-vote.

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.