Republican Party State Head Posts Election Disinformation Video

The head of the Repub­li­can Par­ty in the US state of Ari­zona has post­ed a dis­in­for­ma­tion video titled “Domin­ion Exposed” in which she says that the video “should ter­ri­fy every sin­gle Amer­i­can.” The six minute video expounds a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry cen­tered on elec­tion machines man­u­fac­tured by Domin­ion Vot­ing Sys­tems, which has about 30% of the U.S. vot­ing machine mar­ket. Rea­son mag­a­zine describes the the­o­ry as follows:

While the reporters and news anchors are get­ting their infor­ma­tion from offi­cial sources like city com­mis­sion­ers and elec­tion offi­cials at all lev­els of gov­ern­ment, 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.

On Novem­ber 12, the US Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty issued the fol­low­ing state­ment:

“The Novem­ber 3rd elec­tion was the most secure in Amer­i­can his­to­ry. Right now, across the coun­try, elec­tion offi­cials are review­ing and dou­ble check­ing the entire elec­tion process pri­or to final­iz­ing the result.“When states have close elec­tions, many will recount bal­lots. All of the states with close results in the 2020 pres­i­den­tial race have paper records of each vote, allow­ing the abil­i­ty to go back and count each bal­lot if nec­es­sary. This is an added ben­e­fit for secu­ri­ty and resilience. This process allows for the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and cor­rec­tion of any mis­takes or errors. There is no evi­dence that any vot­ing sys­tem delet­ed or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way com­pro­mised. “Oth­er secu­ri­ty mea­sures like pre-elec­tion test­ing, state cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of vot­ing equip­ment, and the U.S. Elec­tion Assis­tance Commission’s (EAC) cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of vot­ing equip­ment help to build addi­tion­al con­fi­dence in the vot­ing sys­tems used in 2020. “While we know there are many unfound­ed claims and oppor­tu­ni­ties for mis­in­for­ma­tion about the process of our elec­tions, we can assure you we have the utmost con­fi­dence in the secu­ri­ty and integri­ty of our elec­tions, and you should too. When you have ques­tions, turn to elec­tions offi­cials as trust­ed voic­es as they admin­is­ter elections.”

In Octo­ber, the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) post­ed on an exten­sive report detail­ing what it describes as the adop­tion by US Pres­i­dent Trump and his allies of the tac­tics of infor­ma­tion war­fare nor­mal­ly asso­ci­at­ed with author­i­tar­i­an regimes.

As not­ed in the GIOR FAQ:

The US is unique among demo­c­ra­t­ic coun­tries at this point in time because it is the only demo­c­ra­t­ic coun­try that is known to have its own gov­ern­ment and/or a major polit­i­cal par­ty con­duct­ing influ­ence oper­a­tions direct­ed at its own cit­i­zens. This looks like­ly to con­tin­ue for the fore­see­able future.