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- Christopher Giles and Jake Horton
- BBC fact check
US President Trump criticized the electronic voting system widely used by electoral authorities, saying the system cost him millions of votes.
The machine Trump addressed was provided by the Dominion voting system. He accused the machine of eliminating votes and said that his political opponents improperly influenced the company.
What did Trump accuse? Is your reasoning valid?
Trump said, “Dominin knocked out 2.7 million Trump votes across the country.”
Conclusion: there is no evidence to support this claim.
Trump was referring to a story published by the conservative media “One American News Network” that supports him. The report stated that “the electoral system across the country was found to have removed millions of votes for President Trump.”
The report mentioned an “unaudited data analysis” from an election monitoring organization called Edison Research. However, company president Larry Rosin said, “Edison Research did not conduct such an analysis report, nor do we have any evidence of voter fraud.”
“First News Network” did not provide evidence to support its allegations.
President Trump and his supporters also shared a report from Fox News anchor Sean Hannity that Dominion voted to transfer votes from key states to Trump’s name. Under the name of Biden.
The report highlighted problems in Antrim County, Michigan, where Dominion machines are used, and hinted that similar problems may also exist in other counties.
County Antrim had a problem, but it wasn’t a Dominion software problem. As Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson pointed out, this is human error.
County Antrim staff did not set up the machine’s reporting function correctly at first, so the initial result was wrong, saying that Biden won by about 3,000 votes.
Election officials noticed unusual results in this typical Republican district, so they checked the reporting function and counted the votes. The results showed that Trump won by about 2,500 votes.
Secretary of State Benson said officials quickly uncovered the initial error statistics and corrected the errors. Even if it is not corrected, it will be discovered on subsequent inspection to identify errors. He also said: “There is no evidence that this user error has occurred in other parts of the state.”
Presenter Hannity also pointed to potential problems in Georgia, where Dominion machines are widely used, but the state secretary of state said that while some reports were delayed, the software accurately counted and reported state votes.
Dominin’s voting system issued a statement that read: “The claim that Dominin converts or removes votes is 100% incorrect.”
Trump said: “The radical left has the Dominion voting system.”
Conclusion: this is not correct. The company does not belong to the “radical left” and has donated money to both Republicans and Democrats in the past.
When Trump mentioned ownership of “radical leftists,” he didn’t know who he was referring to. It may refer to a claim circulating online that the company is related to the Clinton family and other Democratic politicians, including Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi.
There is a difference between Trump’s direct ownership of Dominion and donations from the company for charitable or lobbying purposes. It is also important to clarify this difference. Dominen has donated money to Republican and Democratic interest groups, but it is not uncommon for companies like this to lobby in this way to reach an agreement with the government.
Dominion Voting Company issued a statement stating that it is a non-partisan US company and that its ownership has nothing to do with the Pelosi family or any member of the Clinton Global Initiative.
The Clinton Foundation also issued a statement saying: “We never participated in the Dominion voting system; we have never participated in the operation of the company; it can be confirmed that we are not currently working together.”
However, Dominin made a donation to the Clinton Foundation in 2014 and made a charitable commitment to the foundation to donate electoral technology to the poorest countries.
The company also donated to the Senate committee of the Republican Majority Leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell.
The rumors about Ms. Pelosi originated from her former chief of staff, Nadeam Elshami (Nadeam Elshami), who was hired by the Dominican company, but the company also hired people previously associated with the Republican Party.
Members of President-elect Biden’s transition team have also been accused of being involved with Dominin.
The social media posts stated that Peter Neffenger, a volunteer from the Biden team, is the president of Smartmatic, a subsidiary of Dominion.
The fact is that Nefinger is indeed the president of Smartmatic, but Smartmatic is a competitor of Dominion, not a subsidiary.
Trump said: These machines “are rejected by Texas and many other states because they are not easy to use or safe.”
Conclusion: Texas does not provide certification for machines. The approach is different from other states.
The US federal government has provided guidelines for the certification of voting machines, showing that a common standard has emerged across the country.
However, Texas has set additional requirements that Dominin’s machine cannot meet. For example, each ballot has a unique number so it can be tracked.
“Banning these numbers creates greater protection of voter privacy. On the other hand, appropriate security measures are also being put in place,” said Dan Wallach, a computer scientist at Rice University, Texas. . He is also an advisor to the National Guidelines for Voting Machines.
Regulations and rules vary widely from state to state, but the US government’s cybersecurity agency has expressed confidence in the use of voting machines across the country. “There is no evidence that the ballots in the voting system have been removed, lost, changed or compromised in any way.”