For a year now, a dark, often unspoken caveat has been lurking in the backgrounds of our minds when the discussion has turned to the prospect of Republican gains in the 2010 elections. Some have dared speak it aloud: “Yes, the Democrats are going to be swept away in ’10 — if we still have free elections by then.”

The integrity of the democratic process has taken enough of a pounding in recent years thanks to a litany of high-profile Democrat election thefts: the Governor’s Mansion in Washington; a Senate seat in Minnesota; who knows how many razor-thin House elections; and of course, the 2000 attempt at the grandest electoral heist of all. (Even the high-profile prostitution of Mary Landrieu over health care makes it worth remembering how she came into office in 1996.) With the installation of the Chicago Thugocracy, the appropriation of the Census by Rahm Emanuel, and the Congress’ apparent fearlessness in pushing through legislation that has enraged two-thirds of the American people, conservative imagination has been sparked on the question of how Democrats might altogether insulate themselves from that inconvenient biennial bugaboo of federal elections.

Thanks to John Fund, we may have our answer: Universal Voter Registration. As Fund put it:

“In January, Chuck Schumer and Barney Frank will propose universal voter registration. What is universal voter registration? It means all of the state laws on elections will be overriden by a federal mandate. The feds will tell the states: ’take everyone on every list of welfare that you have, take everyone on every list of unemployed you have, take everyone on every list of property owners, take everyone on every list of driver’s license holders and register them to vote regardless of whether they want to be…’”

Universal Voter Registration would mean the end of the democratic process in America. It would turn every red state blue. It would turn our assumptions about 2010 on their ear.

The notion of mandatory, one hundred percent voter turnout has long been a leftist wet dream: The ultimate maximization of “participatory democracy”, at the barrel of a gun, if necessary. Some proponents of this have theorized that, given the nationwide Democrat edge in voter registration, this would naturally translate into continued, assured Democrat victories; other, more pragmatic leftists have understood that the problem with forcing people to the polls is that they can’t necessarily be relied upon to vote the correct way once inside the booth.

Thus, they’ve come up with something even better: mandatory voter registration. The federalization of state voter rolls, the goal being to register everybody; every man, woman, child, pimp, wino, dog, corpse, fictional cartoon character (the non-fictional cartoon characters are all already in office), and properly-named inanimate object the feds can think of. The ACORN-ization of every election, in every state, in every county, in every city, in every precinct. Whether the decision is of the fate of your local sheriff this fall or that of Barack H. Obama in 2012, a maximum of 30% of the legally registered voters will actually show up, leaving the remaining 70% of names on the rolls to be manipulated however your local and state election officials desire. Turnout can be made to appear as high or as low as necessary. A race that would under ordinary circumstances be a blowout for a Republican immediately becomes a done deal for his or her Democrat opponent, the best part being that the results can be tweaked down to a close margin of Democrat victory in order to maintain the appearance of propriety. Leftists have been working for years to put as many of their number into positions to steal as many elections as possible; hence such endeavors as The Secretary of State Project. Universal Voter Registration will be the oil for the machinery they have been so successful at building.

This is why Mary Landrieu is not concerned about her next election. Or Ben Nelson. Or Blanche Lincoln. Or even John Murtha. They belong to that once-in-a-lifetime trifecta of rabid socialist President and supermajority Democrat dominance of both houses of Congress, a trifecta that has bred their arrogant push to drive their legislative tanks over the backs of the American people; to see to it that they not only will they, the Left, get everything they have ever wanted, they will never have to pay a price for it.

Until now, the total and absolute liberal rigging of American elections has been only an abstract idea. Now, though, it appears the Democrats have a concrete plan and are preparing to move on it, and there is no reason to believe they will not do so with the same fearlessness, and disregard for the anger of their constituents, they have displayed in the health-care fight. After all, why should they? If Democrats succeed in their push for this, what are we going to do — vote them out?