George W. Bush triumphed over Al Gore and then John Kerry in 2000 and 2004 because of voter fraud.

Impossible, you say?

Think again.

Project Censored, the media watchdog group, dedicated an entire chapter to Bush’s second-term victory in its 2006 edition of the previous year’s most underreported and covered-up stories.

The chapter, “No Paper Trail Left Behind: The Theft of the 2004 Presidential Election,” details how Bush became the first president in U.S. history to win reelection, despite below-50-percent approval ratings.

It points out that Florida reported a presidential vote count in 2004 that was 237,522 higher than the number of registered voters in the state.

And exit polls in 2004 were wrong for the first time since their conception — but only in precincts that used electronic ballots with no paper trail.

During the 2000 presidential election, according to Project Censored, voters in predominantly black, inner-city precincts in states such as Ohio and Florida had to wait hours to cast their ballots, because so few voting machines were provided. And many of those votes were never counted.

In 2000, one million black voters cast ballots that never registered on the machines.

In 2004 the same thing happened, only this time more than one million black ballots went uncounted.

This disenfranchisement was perpetrated by many in the Republican Party, including Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and his Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, who in 2000 wrongly stopped tens of thousands of black citizens from voting by labeling them as felons, according to a November, 2000 story in the British newspaper, “The Guardian.”

Yet many Americans don’t remember even reading or hearing about how George W. Bush owed his election in 2000 and 2004 to widespread voter fraud.

The American public’s lack of awareness is frightening.

And the sad reality is that we cannot trust that the local paper or news stations will keep us informed. The rich and powerful owners of mainstream media outlets are at times better served by keeping silent.

We cannot allow this injustice to occur again in the Nov. 4, 2008 presidential election.

We can never again allow a presidential candidate to use illegal means to defy the will of the majority of voters.

Our voices must be heard, our votes must be counted.

But change will never come, the injustice will never be stopped, if we don’t come together and demand it.

We need to take a page from Peter Finch’s character, Howard Beale, in the movie, “Network,” and throw open our windows and shout, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore.”