One day before the US midterm elections, companies that produce electronic voting machines in the country face skepticism from the Republican Party base, especially among supporters of former President Donald Trump. According to the news agency Reutersprotests against electronic voting machines in the states of Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, South Dakota and Minnesota have succeeded locally in getting authorities to institute hand counting as a check on the automated tabulation of companies like Dominion and ES&S.
In one Nevada county, Dominion ballot boxes with touchscreens were unanimously rejected by election commission members. With the measure, the company no longer earns more than US$50,000 (R$254,000) annually from the county in maintenance and other services. Targeted by Trump campaign fraud accusations in 2020, she declined to comment on her financial health over the past two years or give details of her response to current discrediting campaigns, but told Reuters who has been actively active in the “refutation of dangerous lies spread against us”.
Trump himself claimed on Twitter, days after the November 2020 vote, that Dominion had “deleted” some votes and “converted” others into votes for Biden. The company has started eight defamation lawsuits against allies of the former president and conservative publications. In a Delaware court, it is asking Fox News to pay $1.6 billion in damages for allegedly false claims about Dominion’s technology.
Fox countered that the lawsuit would be an outrageous attempt to stop its journalism. The trial is scheduled for April 2023. Another Dominion strategy was to hire as a consultant a former Republican governor of Nevada, Robert List, who has been the public face of the company in meetings with the public. He calls himself a supporter of Trump and comments that his defeat “was not the fault of the machines”.
The company ES&S, on the other hand, said that it did not lose customers as a result of the protests and declared that “jurisdictions continue to seek [nosso]
reliable support for their elections”. Despite the reluctance of both to comment on their financial situation, the firm specializing in corporate data PrivCo said that Dominion and ES&S increased their profits in 2021. The companies make public statements and claim that they are not controlled by foreigners and that their machines do not access the internet. , two of the repeated points in rumors.
The dispute over “electronic voting systems” involves campaigns by candidates for governor or secretary of state in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Election officials report being the target of hundreds of messages containing threats. Activists who believe President Joe Biden’s victory was fraudulent have already been caught trying to gain access to voting equipment in 18 or more security incidents since the 2020 election.
Last Thursday (3), a man from Colorado, in the American Midwest, was arrested on suspicion of trying to rig an electronic voting machine with a pen drive
of USB port. Richard Patton, 31, is registered as a Democratic voter. The attempt would have taken place last June, in the party’s primaries. Local authorities told the Associated Press that the incident did not alter results and that election data were not accessed. The machines trigger a mechanism that makes them inoperable when manipulation is attempted, as happened in this case. It was the first arrest under a new state law that made the punishment more severe and expanded the scope of the definition of “adulteration.”
In the state of Louisiana, a 2021 law created a voting systems commission to assess suspicions against electronic voting machines and automatic tabulation systems. The law also banned a type of electronic voting machine that does not print an auditable receipt. In this state, one of the main influences is the Trumpist businessman Mike Lindell, from the pillow and mattress company MyPillow. He wants the state to remove all machines from the electoral process and go back to using paper ballots only. In response, Dominion launched a public relations campaign in Louisiana valued at US$100 million.
In this week’s midterm elections, 435 representatives will be elected, the entirety of one of the houses of parliament, and a third of 100 senators, in addition to the governors of 34 of the 50 US states. According to Verified Voting, an organization that monitors election technologies, 70% of American voters live in places that use paper ballots at the polls. These ballots are counted by electronic readers or, in rare cases, are counted by hand. A quarter of Americans vote on machines that physically mark the vote on paper ballots, which are auditable receipts. Votes in electronic voting machines comparable to Brazilian ones are only 7% of the total. They may or may not issue auditable receipts.
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