Baseless Conspiracy Theory Targets Another Election Technology Company
Quick Take
An unfounded conspiracy theory of widespread election fraud claims that an election technology company called Smartmatic switched votes in the 2020 election. But Smartmatic provided ballot-marking machines to only one U.S. county in the election.
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The Trump campaign’s legal team increasingly has been leaning on conspiracy theories in its effort to blame the president’s reelection defeat on widespread voter fraud, for which there is no evidence.
In court, the team has brought largely unsuccessful lawsuits that lack evidence. In public, they have been spouting unfounded claims and conspiracy theories.
The most recent example is aimed at a company called Smartmatic, which has said it supplied voting equipment to one U.S. county.
Despite Smartmatic’s relatively small share of the U.S. voting apparatus, Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, and Sidney Powell, who had appeared with the Trump campaign’s legal team until recently, have suggested that it is the source of nationwide fraud.
Powell claimed at a Nov. 19 press conference that Smartmatic had switched votes away from Trump and gave them to President-elect Joe Biden using technology supposedly developed for former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who in 2013. Previously, Powell had advanced a similar conspiracy theory that a secret supercomputer was used to switch votes. We already that one.
