US Election 2020: What is ‘Dominion’ Trump blaming for ‘electoral fraud’?

US President Donald Trump has continued his rant against the election results which has projected Joe Biden, a Democrat, as 46th President of the United States. Trump has targeted Dominion Voting Systems for his unproven claims of electoral fraud, tweeting an unsubstantiated story from One America News Network, a far-right, pro-Trump cable channel.

The outgoing President tried to amplify the baseless claim that “Dominion deleted 2.7 million Trump votes nationwide.” Citing “data analysis”, the Republican leader tweeted that 221,000 Pennsylvania votes switched from Trump to Biden and 941,000 Trump votes got deleted. The tweet has already been flagged by the micro-blogging platform, warning that the claim is disputed.

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What is Dominion Voting Systems?

Dominion Voting Systems Corporation is a North America-based company which provides voting machines and tabulators in the United States and Canada. As many as 28 states used Dominion’s voting machines, or tabulators, to scan paper ballots in US elections. Dominion’s tabulators are programmed to scan hand-marked paper ballots.

After the tabulators finish scanning the ballots, the paper ballots are retained and a totals tape, showing the number of votes for each candidate, is printed from the machine. County clerks use election management system software, which combines the totals from tabulators, to report unofficial results.

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Dominion fact-checked Trump’s claim

Dominion Voting Systems denied claims about vote switching or alleged software issues with its voting systems. The company fact-checked that deletion of 2.7 million votes for President Trump, including 941,000 in Pennsylvania, is “mathematically impossible.” It stated that Dominion serves 14 counties in Pennsylvania that produced 1.3 million votes and fifty-two per cent of those votes went to President Trump.

“Calculating that out, Dominion processed about 676,000 votes for the President in Pennsylvania. There never were 941,000 votes to ‘delete’,” it concluded.

In Michigan’s Antrim County, the clerk reportedly did not update software, even though the tabulators counted all the ballots correctly, leading to inaccurate unofficial results. Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said in a statement that the Dominion software did not cause a misallocation of votes as it was a result of human error, which was caught during county canvasses. Benson stressed that even if the error in the reported unofficial results had not been quickly noticed, it would have been identified during the county canvass, adding that there are many checks and balances that ensure mistakes can be caught and corrected.

“Boards of County Canvassers, which are composed of 2 Democrats and 2 Republicans, review the printed totals tape from each tabulator during the canvass to verify the reported vote totals are correct,” the statement read.

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