Trump campaign ignores so-called 'rigged' voting machines in states GOP won

Donald Trump and his campaign have spent the past several days baselessly suggesting that President-elect Joe Biden only won because of rigged voting machines. But the same company’s voting machines were also used in states where he and other Republicans did quite well.

“Why does the Fake News Media continuously assume that Joe Biden will ascend to the Presidency, not even allowing our side to show, which we are just getting ready to do, how badly shattered and violated our great Constitution has been in the 2020 Election,” Trump tweeted last week. Among the false arguments he made was that some Biden-won states used “Radical Left owned Dominion Voting Systems, turned down by Texas and many others because it was not good or secure.”

“Dominion is running our Election. Rigged!” he incorrectly claimed.

This weekend, he repeatedly shared videos from a right-wing outlet making false conspiracy claims about Dominion’s machines.

In recent days, Trump campaign lawyers have also pushed the argument.

Jenna Ellis, an attorney with the campaign, suggested without any evidence on Friday that in the solidly blue state of Colorado, “Dominion may have swung some of the state and local races.”

And another lawyer for the campaign, Sidney Powell, falsely claimed at a campaign press conference on Thursday that the software used on Dominion machines had been rigged for Biden at the direction of former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who died in 2013. Trump’s team disavowed Powell on Sunday evening.

But while Dominion’s machines were used in Colorado — and in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, the six swing-states won by Biden and disputed by Trump — they were also utilized in many other states, including several won by Trump.

According to the nonpartisan group Verified Voting, Dominion’s ImageCast Central machines were used in this year’s elections in all or part of Alaska, Kansas, Louisiana, Ohio, and Tennessee. Dominion’s ImageCast Precinct machines were also used in Alaska, Kansas, and Tennessee, as well as in Iowa and Missouri.

Trump carried each of those states.

Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska, Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, Sen.-elect Roger Marshall of Kansas, Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, and Sen.-elect Bill Hagerty of Tennessee — all Republicans — also all won in those states, even with Dominion machines in operation.

A spokesperson for the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to an inquiry for this story. But, to date, the campaign has not called into question any of those GOP victories.

Contrary to the conspiracy theories, there is no evidence that Dominion’s machines malfunctioned on election night. Though viral social media posts claimed some “glitched in favor of Biden,” this has been widely debunked. In one instance, an election worker initially recorded a Michigan county’s vote total incorrectly but quickly fixed the human error.

There is also no truth to the claims that the late Hugo Chavez has any connection to Dominion’s machines or software. A spokesperson for Dominion told The Dispatch on Friday that their machines have never used the Venezuelan software in question.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.