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November 3, 2012
Will Your Vote Even Get Counted?
By Sheila Parks, Ed.D.
Since most of us will be voting on highly riggable electronic voting machines, the election of these anti-women Republican candidates is greatly enhanced. The Republican War on Women and the war on our ballots are inextricably entwined. There is no way to know if our votes will be counted as cast on these electronic voting machines.
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Cross-posted from On The Issues MagazineIn next week's presidential elections women could, in effect, lose ownership of their bodies if the Romney-Ryan ticket, with its hard right stance wins. Even if Romney loses it will be a sad day for women in some quarters if candidates such as Akin and Mourdock, with their frightening, absurdist and fundamentalist leanings, are successful.
These candidates also may have an advantage that has not been publicized widely enough. Our elections are controlled by an international, privatized electronic voting industry, making it hard to know who actually owns the voting machines we use. Based on my research on rigged elections, I believe there is a deliberate effort to obscure some ownership issues. Records show that Unisyn, owned by a Malaysian gambling company, Scytl, ES&S, Dominion, Sequoia and Hart InterCivic are major players. There have been allegations that Tagg, Ann and Mitt Romney own Hart InterCivic , whose machines will be used in parts of Ohio and in Colorado (both swing states), and other states too.
Sheila Parks, Ed.D., is a former college professor. She had a spiritual awakening many years ago and left her career to do peace and justice work full time.
She is the founder of the grassroots group On Behalf of Planet Earth (found on FB). The group vigiled at the Japanese Consulate/Boston in 2014, standing in solidarity with the people of Japan about the tragic and disastrous meltdown of nuclear power plant Fukushima Daiichi, The group now focuses on closing all nuclear power plants now. We are also focusing now on boycotting the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. The entire country of Japan is radiated and is not a place where we should be sending our young athletes or anyone else.
Nuclear power plants are crimes against humanity, all living creatures, and our beautiful and so troubled planet Earth. They leave radioactive waste that lasts hundreds of thousands and even millions of years. They cause leukemia and other cancers. We stand in solidarity with all our sisters and brothers working to keep all fossil fuels in the ground, stop fracking, close all pipelines, halt the construction of new pipelines - that includes all the corporations that do this work for the oil and gas industries.
She spent many years in the struggle against nuclear weapons with the Catholic Left. Many of those years involved lots of non-violent civil disobedience against nuclear weapons and other evils of the USA society. She spent a year in prison for a Plowshares action against first strike nuclear weapons, Trident II.
Defending the abortion clinics with her body for many years was a part of her feminist activities.
Parks spent 13 years working for voting rights, against all electronic voting machines and for the solution of hand-counted paper ballots. She is the author of a book, published September 6, 2012: "WHILE WE STILL HAVE TIME: The Perils of Electronic Voting Machines and Democracy's Solution: Publicly Observed, Secure Hand-Counted Paper Ballots (HCPB)Elections" and the Founder of the Center for Hand-Counted Paper Ballots.
She lives in Watertown, MA, and is an ardent socialist feminist, internationalist, investigative journalist and peace & justice activist/organizer.