US elections: Trump claims 2.7 million votes were ‘knocked out’ by Dominion voting system

In a capitalized White House tweet, Donald Trump has sensationally asserted that 2.7 million votes cast by him in last week’s election have been “knocked out” by an electronic voting system.

Citing a report from the right-wing news channel One America News Network (OANN), he claimed that under the system 221,000 Pennsylvania votes switched from Trump to Biden and that 941,000 Trump votes were eliminated in that state alone.

It stems from claims made about a Canadian company called Dominion Voting Systems, which is one of the top three companies that makes software for local governments in the US to help make their choices.

Basically, it makes machines for voters to cast their votes and for poll workers to count.

In last week’s vote, its software was used in several states where fraud was alleged, including Michigan and Georgia, and in North Carolina and Nevada, where election results are disputed.

The software has been rolled out in the US in recent years, but has been opposed in some states. Texas, for example, has refused to use it three times, saying it did not meet basic safety standards.

Now, right-wing media outlets say vote-swapping software was used and even suggest the company was doing what the Clintons asked of it, a conspiracy theory Trump shared on Twitter.

On Thursday, the president’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, said he was in contact with “whistleblowers” from Dominion. And overnight, Trump tweeted allegations that Dominion “removed” and “traded” hundreds of thousands of votes for him.

While there is no evidence for the claims on the scale the president talks about, there have been some problems with software “glitches”.

Voting officials in Michigan confirmed that a software glitch initially awarded approximately 5,000 Trump-cast votes to Biden in Antrim County, leading to a manual recount, extended voting hours and delayed results.

Initial results, showing Biden ahead by roughly 3,000 votes, drew attention in the Republican stronghold, which was why poll workers double-checked.

They were right to be skeptical. The correct counts showed that Trump beat Biden by approximately 2,500 votes in the county.

In a statement, state officials said the error was an “isolated user error” that did not affect the election results.

They said that the software on the machines was not properly updated, which means that the votes were accurately counted by the machines, but the results they showed were incorrect.

In Georgia, voting early in the morning on Election Day was temporarily halted in Morgan and Spalding counties when Dominion machines were involved in a problem involving electronic voting books produced by a subcontractor. Technicians solved the problem, and Trump easily took both counties away.

Meanwhile, in Oakland County, Michigan, election officials also spotted an error after they first reported unofficial counts.

The Michigan State Department said they realized they had mistakenly counted the votes of the city of Rochester Hills, Michigan, twice.

The New York Times reports that revised counts showed that a serving Republican county commissioner had kept his seat, not lost it. Oakland County used software from a company called Hart InterCivic, not Dominion, and the software was not blamed for the error.

However, Dominion has also run into trouble with several subsidiaries it used for alleged cases of election fraud abroad.

One subsidiary is Smartmatic, a company “that has played a significant role in the US market for the past decade,” according to AccessWire.

The litigation over Smartmatic’s “technical failures” alleges that it had an impact on the 2010 and 2013 midterm elections in the Philippines, raising questions of voter fraud. An independent review of the machines found serious problems.

“The software inventory provided by Smartmatic is inadequate … which calls into question the credibility of the software,” ABS-CBN reported.

Then there are allegations, stemming from right-wing news websites, that the company has strong ties to Democrats.

The National Pulse claims that Dominion is “overwhelmingly made up of Democratic donors.”

It reports that from 2014 to 2020, nine individuals listing Dominion Voting or Dominion Voting Systems as their employer contributed money to national political campaigns, including the 2020 presidential election. With a total of 96 donations, the sum amounts to $ US1241.15 .

“Employee positions span the entire voting system process, from setup to tabulation, including software developers, network engineers, software production specialists, and implementation managers,” he says.

“Of the 96 donations, 92 in total, or 95.8 percent, went to Democratic candidates, primarily through ActBlue. This means that of the $ 1,241.15, a total of $ 1,154.90 went to boost to the Democrats. “

Dominion responded to the claims in a detailed response on its website, saying that it categorically denies any claims about any vote changes or alleged software problems with its voting systems.

“Dominion’s systems continue to count ballots reliably and accurately, and state and local election authorities have publicly confirmed the integrity of the process,” he said.

He then provided a breakdown of some of the claims he has faced in recent days and the “facts” that clarify them.

One of them is the claim, repeated by Trump, that the company has strong ties to the Clintons.

Dominion said he made a one-time philanthropic commitment at a 2014 Clinton Global Initiative meeting, but the Clinton Foundation has no interest or involvement in its operations.

It said there are no credible reports or evidence of software problems and that claims about software updates made the night before Election Day are “100 percent false.”

Meanwhile, Trump’s claim that the machines had stolen 2.7 million votes from him remains unsubstantiated.

Fact-checking website Politifact said the claim was based on an OANN report that said it had “an unaudited analysis of data obtained from Edison Research.”

Edison Research is a company contracted with the National Election Pool, a consortium of US news organizations, to provide exit poll data during election cycles.

The company said it has found no data to support the OANN report or Trump’s tweet.

Politifact said the claim is “inaccurate and ridiculous.”

“Edison Research told us that they have found no evidence of voter fraud. Dominion, state election officials and federal officials say there is no evidence that millions of votes were incorrectly counted,” he said.

On its website, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency says bad actors couldn’t change the vote count undetected, even if they tried.

“The systems and processes used by election officials to tabulate votes and certify official results are protected by various safeguards that help ensure the accuracy of election results,” the agency says.

“These safeguards include measures that help ensure that tabulation systems work as intended, protect against malicious software, and allow for the identification and correction of any irregularities.”