What's the deal with Dominion?
There is no evidence that electronic voting machines "stole" the election from Trump.
Reason’s Eric Boehm dives into the conspiracy theories, promoted by right-wing media outlets and the President of the United States, about the Canadian-founded company Dominion Voting Systems:
…the Dominion conspiracy theory seems to have originated with a false claim made anonymously on a pro-Trump website. It rose quickly through the less trustworthy parts of the right-wing mediasphere until it caught the president's attention.
In an all-caps tweet on Saturday night, Trump highlighted a report from One America News Network (OANN), a right-wing outlet, that claimed voting machines made by Dominion Voting Systems had "switched" more than 200,000 votes from Trump to Biden and "deleted" another 900,000 Trump votes. That made it a story worthy of being covered by Trump's symbiotes at Fox News and elsewhere.
It is, to be clear, completely unsubstantiated.
The OANN report that Trump tweeted claimed that "data obtained from Edison Research," a polling firm, proved the allegations. But Edison Research has published no such report and has no data suggesting anything like that, the company's president toldThe Dispatch.
Furthermore, Dominion Voting Systems has told the Associated Press that they have no evidence of "any vote switching or alleged software issues with our voting systems." And Edward Perez, global director of technology for the OSET Institute, a nonpartisan nonprofit that monitors elections around the world, toldThe New York Times that the group has seen no evidence of problems with Dominion voting machines that would cause votes to be recorded incorrectly.
The few instances of "irregularities" in vote counts that lend the slightest whiff of believability to things like the Dominion conspiracy seem to fall apart upon closer scrutiny. In Michigan, for example, mistakes that election officials said were "human error" led to some results changing as those slips were identified and fixed. A viral tweet that showed Biden suddenly gaining 138,000 votes in Michigan while Trump gained none was the result of a glitch in the reporting system, not the result of vote counting issues. The numbers were quickly corrected. And, as Republican officials in Michigan reminded The New York Times over the weekend, election results are certified only after a bipartisan group of canvassers double-check the vote count in every county.
One of the more interesting subplots this election season has been the tension between the actual journalists at Fox News - yes, they have several - and the prime-time “opinion” hosts trying desperately to keep their man in the White House. Anchor Eric Shawn, for one, couldn’t take it anymore:
And this is what you get when you’re only mostly for the Dear Leader, not entirely for him:
Trump himself is encouraging his followers to migrate to devout fringe outlets like Newsmax and OANN instead. It’s hardly surprising. Fox rode a tiger for years, and now it’s having trouble getting off its back.
Speaking of riding tigers, I wonder if this might make Democrats think twice about making excuses for Portland, Oregon’s radical protesters:
The day after President-elect Joe Biden delivered his victory speech, telling the nation it was time to heal and unite, a clandestine Twitter account — @safePDXprotest — summoned Portland anarchists.
Meet at Laurelhurst Park at 8 p.m. and “Wear Bloc & Be Water,” the message said, calling for black garb and vigilance to evade police for a protest “in solidarity with BLM” — Black Lives Matter.
The 50 or so people who showed up — nearly all of them white — looked like ninjas as they put on balaclavas, hoods and scarves. Some carried gas masks.
The call to action had declared “No Masters” — leaders, in the parlance of 19th century European anarchists — but the crowd huddled around one young man as he lambasted liberals for celebrating the defeat of President Trump while capitalism and the political system remained entrenched.
“They can show up to dance ’cause of Orange Man bad, but they can’t be out here fighting with us,” he said. “So that’s why we’re going. ... I’m tired of liberal complacency.”
Word spread through the group that the target tonight would be the local headquarters of the Democratic Party.
Somebody started beating a drum as a chant broke out: “F— Joe Biden!”
You often see the terms “BLM” and “Antifa” used interchangeably, and there is undoubtedly some overlap amongst their respective supporters. But as it turns out, many African-American activists aren’t that big on privileged edgy white kids destroying everything in sight:
Black activists and community leaders, who generally view the defeat of Trump as an opportunity for change within the system, said the anarchists are hijacking the movement and undermining the push for racial justice by continuing to commit violence.
“When people set fire to a building, it really does not liberate me one bit,” said Mingus Mapps, a Black resident who won a seat on the Portland City Council this month. “It does the opposite. It fuels the political culture that makes racism possible.”
[…]
It took the anarchists 20 minutes to make their way through the Laurelhurst neighborhood Nov. 8 and arrive at the county Democratic Party headquarters.
Tall plate-glass windows lined the former car dealership on two sides, festooned with campaign posters for Biden and other candidates.
Two activists approached the building, one holding an umbrella to conceal the other, who spray-painted an anti-Biden epithet on a wall, adding an anarchist symbol. In red, he wrote “ACAB” — short for “all cops are bastards.”
Six more protesters pounded on the windows, shattering 13 of them before rejoining the group keeping watch in the parking lot.
“Stay together, stay tight, we do this every night,” the group chanted before marching back across the avenue and dispersing into the neighborhood.
Police in riot gear arrived, riding troop trucks and bicycles to search for suspects. Scouring the neighborhood, they arrested three white men in their early 20s and 30s on accusations of criminal mischief.
The next day, Rachelle Dixon, who heads Portland’s Black Lives Matter chapter, called a reporter to say that the activists had nothing to do with the social justice movement.
She said that in the minds of the public, anarchists have “melded with Black Lives Matter, but they’re 90% white and they don’t reach out to Black organizations.”
Dixon also serves as a vice chair of the Multnomah County Democrats.
“I didn’t destroy my own building,” she said.
Hijacking a movement and doing things that actually harm the very people of color you say you’re protecting? Sounds a lot like “white privilege” to me.
In 1973, someone tried to make a Ford Pinto fly.
It did. But not very well.
The young people in these groups seem to lack coherent thoughts about what should be changed, and the ability to express any such thoughts clearly and civilly. They’re dissatisfied and restless, so they go out and break things. Without social media, they might remain largely isolated from each other. Twitter (etc.) should be identifying these groups, at least so that their actions are not incorrectly associated with other groups who want nothing to do with them.
It’s a fine line to what degree one should monitor such groups and/or take action, but should one really let them go out and destroy things, apparently just as an expression of their general dissatisfaction and inability to address its reasons constructively?