An excerpt from Greg Palast's Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps with comics by Ted Rall and an introduction by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Here are the facts, ma'am:

In the 2008 election, no less than:

• 767,023 provisional ballots were cast and not counted;
• 1,451,116 ballots were "spoiled," not counted;
• 488,136 absentee ballots were mailed in, but not counted.

Add it up: in the last presidential election, no less than 2,706,275 ballots were cast—and never counted. I have not included a quarter million (251,936) provisional ballots counted only in part (that is, for some offices).

That's the official number I've calculated from the records of the US Election Assistance Commission.1 Approximately three million votes flushed away are ugly enough. But it gets worse.

In addition to the roughly three million ballots cast and not counted, no less than:

• 2,383,587 would-be voters had their registrations rejected;

• 491,952 voters already registered were wrongly purged from the rolls; and