Although some victories have been won for democratic practice through tireless bipartisan citizen activism, most notably in Colorado, North Carolina and New Mexico, such grassroots triumphs have been overshadowed by the juggernaut's immense success at reddening blue America. In 2004, 23 percent of the electorate cast their votes on "direct-recording electronic" (DRE) machines. Today, according to Election Data Services, it's over 39 percent. And nearly 41 percent will have their votes counted by computerized scanners—a method preferable to using DRE machines, as it allows for paper ballots, but a risky practice nonetheless. Thus over 80 percent of next month's vote will be counted secretly, by private vendors closely tied to Bush's party.

The GOP has also furthered mass disenfranchisement by passing Jim Crow laws of startling brazenness (yet that have gone largely unnoticed by the press). The Ohio legislature has passed a law that quadruples the price of recounts, makes machine audits near-impossible, hinders registration of new voters, tightens partisan control of the election work-force and requires all voters to bring IDs to the polls. Photo IDs, effectively a poll tax, are now required in Indiana and Florida—where, moreover, it is now illegal to hand-count paper ballots once they have been "counted" by machine. Through such laws—and epidemic lawlessness—the party will control the vote throughout the nation on November 7.

BRAZEN BEHAVIOR—While the party has pre-empted innumerable votes below the radar, it has also shown a steely willingness to thwart the voters openly, if they should dare resist the party's will. Take, for example, last summer's special race in San Diego to fill the empty seat of the felonious Randy Cunningham, a former Republican congressman who is now doing time for accepting bribes. Although leading in the pre-election polls, the Democrat, Francine Busby, lost to Brian Bilbray of the GOP; and then it came out that the party's poll workers had been ordered to take the e-voting machinery home with them for several days before the vote.

At the news of this jaw-dropping wrong (it being a very simple task to fiddle with the gadgets' memory cards and thereby fix the final count), San Diegans called for an investigation and a new election. A week after the election—and seventeen days before the vote was even certified—Bilbray flew to Washington, where he was summarily sworn in by House Speaker Dennis Hastert. In late August that amazing move was, still more amazingly, approved by Superior Court Judge Yuri Hofmann, who argued that the state of California had no jurisdiction once the Speaker of the House had made the people's choice.

If Dennis Hastert can choose Brian Bilbray for that seat, irrespective of the will of the electorate, why bother having House elections anywhere? Indeed, why bother with elections? Why not just have Congress's membership decided by the Speaker of the House—or by President Bush himself? Maybe that imperial arrangement would amuse the press as much as it appeals to Bush & Co. Otherwise there might have been some coverage of the scandal by the news media, which has largely disregarded it (while Hastert's role in Foleygate is a huge story).

ELEVENTH-HOUR PLAN—Such journalistic silence makes it all the likelier that the Republicans will get away with it again—although it's also possible, of course, that they will somehow fail to steal it on Election Day. Chance, accident, imperial over-reaching and/or popular resistance can thwart the best-laid plans. If that should happen, though, the party has a plan to fix the problem; and the press's eerie silence on the danger of election fraud could help that strategy succeed.

If the GOP should lose the House or Senate, its troops will mount a noisy propaganda drive accusing their opponents of election fraud. This is no mere speculation, according to a well-placed party operative who lately told talk radio host Thom Hartmann, off the record, that the game will be to shriek indignantly that those dark-hearted Democrats have fixed the race. We will hear endlessly of Democratic "voter fraud" through phantom ballots, rigged machines, intimidation tactics, and all the other tricks whereby the Bush regime has come to power. The regime will, in short, deploy the ultimate Swift Boat maneuver to turn around as many races as they need so as to nullify the will of the electorate.

Of course, the Democrats themselves have a rich history of election fraud, but there's no evidence of much, if any, since Bush came upon the scene; and yet with very few exceptions, they have doggedly refused to speak about the growing danger of such fraud, so that the GOP—the very perpetrators of that fraud—will be the first to make an issue of it. The press too has ignored the issue, other than to bleat, from time to time, that such malfeasance has been common "on both sides." Thus this besieged democracy appears now to have no defenders but ourselves. But we can do that vital work if we will only face what's happening and spread the word, and stand united not as party members, or as liberals, moderates and conservatives, but as Americans.

Mark Crispin Miller has authored many books, including Cruel and Unusual: Bush/Cheney's New World Order and The Bush Dyslexicon, and is a professor of culture and communication at New York University.