Attacks on Dominion voting persist despite high-profile lawsuits

With a string of multi-billion dollar lawsuits, including a $1.6 billion case against Fox News going to trial this month, Dominion Voting Systems sent a stark warning to anyone spreading falsehoods that the company’s technology contributed to the fraud. in the 2020 election: watch your words, or you could pay the price.

Not everyone is heeding the warning.

“Dominion, why don’t you show us what’s inside your machines?” Mike Lindell, the MyPillow executive and prominent voter denialist, yelled during a live broadcast last month. He added that the company, which filed a $1.3 billion libel suit against him, was involved in “the largest cover-up of the greatest crime in United States history, probably in world history.”

Claims that election software companies like Dominion helped orchestrate widespread fraud in the 2020 election have been widely debunked in the years since former President Donald J. Trump and his allies first pushed the theories. But far-right Americans on social media and media influencers have continued in recent weeks and months to make unsubstantiated claims about the company and its electronic voting machines, pressuring government officials to cancel contracts. with Dominion, sometimes successfully.

The enduring attacks illustrate how Trump’s allegations of voter fraud have taken root in the shared imagination of his supporters. And they reflect the daunting challenge facing Dominion and any other groups that get the attention of conspiracy theorists to put an end to the false claims.

The attacks on Dominion have not reached the fever pitch of late 2020, when the company was cast as the central villain in an elaborate, fictional story of voter fraud. In that story, the company swapped votes between candidates, injected fake ballots, or allowed obvious security vulnerabilities to remain in voting machines.

Dominion says that all of those claims have been made without supporting evidence.

“Nearly two years after the 2020 election, credible evidence has never been brought before any court or authority that voting machines have done more than accurately and reliably count votes in every state,” Dominion said in a statement sent by email.

On Friday, the Delaware judge overseeing Fox’s defamation case ruled it was “VERY CLEAR” that Fox News and Fox Business had made false claims about the company, a major setback for the network.

Many prominent influencers have avoided mentioning the company since Dominion began suing prominent conspiracy theorists in 2021. Fox News fired Lou Dobbs that year, just days after she was sued by Smartmatic, another election software company, saying that the network was focusing on “new formats. ” Mr. Dobbs is also a defendant in the Dominion v. Fox case, which is scheduled for trial on April 17.

However, there have been nearly nine million mentions of Dominion on social media, broadcast and traditional media websites since Dominion filed his first claim in January 2021, including nearly a million who mentioned “fraud” or related conspiracy theories, according to Zignal Labs, a media monitoring company. Some of the most shared posts came from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, who tweeted last month that the lawsuits were politically motivated, and Kari Lake, the former Republican candidate for governor of Arizona who has advanced voter fraud theories about the electoral machines. since her defeat last year.

Mr. Lindell remains one of the strongest voices pushing unproven claims against Dominion and electronic voting machines, posting hundreds of videos on Frank Speech, his news site, attacking the company with stories of voter fraud.

Last month, Lindell celebrated on his livestream after Shasta County, a conservative stronghold in Northern California, voted to use paper ballots after ending his contract with Dominion. A county supervisor had flown in to meet in private with Mr. Lindell before the vote, discussing how to conduct elections without voting machines, according to Mr. Lindell. The supervisor ultimately voted to switch to paper tickets.

In an interview this week with The New York Times, Mr. Lindell claimed to have spent millions on campaigns to crack down on voter fraud, focusing on abolishing electronic voting systems and replacing them with paper ballots and manual counting.

“I will never go back, never, never, never,” he said in the interview. He added that Dominion’s lawsuit against him, which continues after the The United States Supreme Court declined to consider his appeal.was “frivolous” and that the company was “guilty”.

“They can’t deny it, nobody can deny it,” Lindell said.

Joe Oltmann, host of the “Conservative Daily Podcast” and promoter of voter fraud conspiracy theories, hosted an episode in late March titled “Dominion Is FINISHED,” in which he claimed there was a “device that is used in voter machines.” Dominion to actually transfer tickets,” offering only speculative support.

“This changes everything,” Oltmann said.

Dominion sent Mr. Oltmann a letter in 2020 demanding that you keep documents related to your claims on the company, which is often the first step in a defamation lawsuit.

In a live broadcast last month on Rumble, the streaming platform popular among right-wing influencers, Tina Peters, a former Colorado county clerk who was indicted on 10 counts related to allegations she manipulated Dominion’s election team, dedicated over an hour to various voter fraud claims, many involving Dominion. The discussion included a suggestion that because the boxes belonging to Dominion were stamped “Made in China”, the electoral system was vulnerable to manipulation by the Chinese Communist Party.

Mr. Oltmann and Ms. Peters did not respond to requests for comment.

Fox’s lawsuit has also added fuel to the conspiracy theory fire.

Far-right news sites have largely ignored the finding that Fox News privately files belittled allegations of voter fraud, even when they were given significant airtime. Instead, the Gateway Pundit, a far-right site known for promoting voter fraud theories, focused on separate documents showing Dominion executives “knew their voting systems had significant security issues,” the site wrote.

The documents showed frantic private messages between Dominion employees while solving problems, with one employee commenting, “our products suck.” In an email, a Dominion spokeswoman said the comment was in reference to a splash screen that concealed an error message.

In February, Trump shared the Gateway Pundit story on Truth Social, his right-wing social network, sparking a new wave of attacks on the company.

“We will not stay silent,” said a far-right influencer whose messages Trump sometimes shares on Truth Social. “Dominance is the enemy!”