Tin Foil Hat Week - Dominion Voting Machine Conspiracy Theories Persist

Today's Links:
Articles
CBS News - 6 conspiracy theories about the 2020 election – debunked
Intelligencer - Trump’s New Vote Fraud Theory Is So Much Crazier Than You Realize
Reuters - Trump allies breach U.S. voting systems in search of 2020 fraud ‘evidence’
PBS -  Conspiracy theories fuel anger as New Mexico counties try to certify 2022 primary vote

You’re listening to the American Democracy Minute, keeping YOUR government by and for the people.

We have another episode in Tin Foil Hat week here on the American Democracy Minute.  Earlier, we reported that Dominion Voting Systems machines were falsely alleged to be part of a widespread 2020 election fraud scheme, yet we’re still hearing about these conspiracies.

Dominion and other suppliers of voting technology make different kinds of systems, but the most widely used are optical ballot tabulating machines.   Such machines read the oval dots you make on ballots when selecting a candidate, and read the ballots faster and more accurately than humans.

But conspiracy theorists doggedly cling to assertions that Dominion tabulators were programmed to switch votes, that parts to the machines could be swapped out to give false vote totals, that Sharpie markers invalidated votes, and even that the Chinese and Venezualan governments hacked them to alter the results.   None of these were true.

In Antrim County, Michigan, the Michigan Secretary of State investigated claims of inaccurate totals which turned out not to be the tabulators, which were accurate, but human error in not updating the reporting software. 

In New Hampshire, the Secretary of State’s office made the decision to fold absentee ballots to save money on postage instead of mailing ballots flat, and optical readers misread the bubbles which fell in the crease, skewing the count. 

Yet conspiracy theories are still being used as arguments to erode confidence in elections and as a pretext for passing more barriers to voting around the United States.   More details at AmericanDemocracyMinute.org.                          

For the American Democracy Minute, I’m Brian Beihl.