How serious?

I'm trying to figure out how serious this IRS scandal is. Specifically, did the Obama team successfully rig the 2012 Presidential Election by deliberately suppressing the GOP vote? 

It's being reported that nearly 500 Tea Party and similar grass-roots conservative organizations were put through the IRS wringer during Obama's first term, leading up to the election that gave him a second term. 

Post-election analyses showed that Romney lost because of a disparity in turnout: Too many in his voter base did not show up at the polls on election day, while Obama's voted in record numbers. This has generally been attributed to a weak turnout effort by Romney, compared with a very sophisticated one by the Obama forces. Romney's get-out-the-vote effort, the ground game that depends on local-level volunteers, seemed to lack enthusiasm; it was a strangely low-energy operation. 

Was that an effect, the intended effect, of a calculated intimidation effort by Obama's IRS?

We know that many conservative organizations threw in the towel when their leadership was presented with impossible demands and years of delay in applications for non-profit tax status. At the same time, parallel Democrat organizations had been waved through and were up and running.

Was there a deliberate program of IRS intimidation leading up to the 2012 election, a program designed to target and neuter precisely those organizations that would supply the GOP effort with its energy, enthusiasm, and grass-roots involvement? The groups that would supply the juice that's so crucial in the closing days of a campaign and on voting day?

There is no doubt that those grass-roots conservative organizations were going to be critical for energizing the GOP effort leading up to the election, and especially for maximizing turnout on election day. But it's reported that IRS did not approve a single one for non-profit status during a period of 27 months leading up to the election.

The IRS abuses are a matter of known fact. The question is what IRS was up to, and what the effect of its activities were. Did IRS attempt to suppress GOP voter turnout by crippling the grass-roots energy base of the GOP campaign? Did the activities of the IRS determine the outcome of the 2012 election?

Byron