Contact information:

Mary Ann Gould

Coalition for Voting Integrity

votingintegrity@aol.com

(c) 215.588.8518

(h)215.357.8558

New Hope - On Saturday, June 3, New York University professor, noted elections expert and author of Fooled Again, a book that examines the Ohio presidential election of 2004, spoke in New Hope at a fundraiser for local voting rights group, the Coalition for Voting Integrity.

The topic of Prof. Miller's speech to the capacity crowd at Esca Restaurant in New Hope was the election fraud that he contends gave Ohio's electoral votes to President Bush in 2004. In his book, Fooled Again, Prof. Miller discusses the misuse of electronic voting machines in Ohio in 2004, but he also looks at the "bureaucratic hijinks aimed at disenfranchising Democrats." For instance, he points to insufficient allocation of voting machines in heavily Democratic areas of the state, leading to long lines and frustrated voters being turned away. He also notes a lock-out at the polls of media representatives and foreign observers. He discusses how the fraud continued during the recount as well.

Although Miller's book focuses on what he calls the theft of the election in Ohio, he made clear several times during his appearance that this is not a partisan issue. "There are conservative Republicans on the right side of this issue," he said using efforts in Arizona and Colorado as examples. "The Democrats are as much to blame as the Republicans because they refuse to talk about it. They're in denial because that's what people do when confronted with a truth too traumatic to take in."

Mary Ann Gould, co-founder of CVI, also spoke to the crowd of about sixty people. Ms. Gould reminded the audience that CVI turned one year old in June and that over that time its position has not changed: "We have the right to know our vote is properly recorded fully and accurately and the only way to achieve that is with a voter-verified paper ballot." Ms. Gould summed up the argument as "No Paper. No Proof. No Way."

As did Prof. Miller, Ms. Gould stressed the non-partisan nature of the event. "This is not a Republican issue. This is not a Democratic issue. This is an American issue," she said to cheers from the crowd.

The Coalition for Voting Integrity is a local volunteer voting rights group dedicated to the establishment of a voter-verified paper ballot and proper audit in Pennsylvania. It was founded by Mary Ann Gould and Ruth Matheny and has been in existence for one year this month.