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 -- 10 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.