Ever since the 2020 presidential election was called for former Vice President Joseph Biden, by every major media decision desk more than a week ago, President Trump and many of his loyalists have steadfastly refused to concede the race. In doing so, Trump and many of his surrogates have spread a web of conspiracy theories involving massive voter fraud and other irregularities, many of them based on anecdotes that have not held up to scrutiny. Meanwhile, nearly every one of the court challenges brought in the most closely contested states have gone against the president’s campaign, state Republican parties, or other associated entities.

In recent days, a specific conspiracy theory has gained purchase, involving Dominion Voting Systems, a previously obscure company that sells voting equipment to various government entities. The conspiracy theory goes that Dominion played some part in rigging the vote in certain states, either by finding new votes for Biden or switching Trump votes to Biden votes.

Other versions of the conspiracy theory say that the company has mysterious foreign ownership, or that various Democrats, including the Clintons, the husbands of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and/or Senator Dianne Feinstein, have financial ties to the company. Another spinoff of the theory claimed that the “U.S. Army” had raided servers in Germany, belonging to the election software company Scytl, which has alleged ties to Dominion, which supposedly was going to blow the lid off the alleged vote-switching conspiracy.

The president has signed on to versions of the Dominion theory, referring on Twitter over the weekend that “people are not going to stand for having this Election stolen from them by a privately owned Radical Left company, Dominion, and many other reasons.”

There is no part of the Dominion theory that has been substantiated in any way whatsoever. And now, Dominion has spoken out about the baseless allegations.

The company, on its homepage, has published a point-by-point refutation, stating that “Dominion Voting Systems categorically denies false assertions about vote switching issues with our voting systems. The company also cited a joint statement from the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) that “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”

The site went on to refute specific allegations about “vote-switching” in Pennsylvania, while also denied any financial ties to any top Democrats, or to the Venezuelan government, which has been an allegation in some conspiracy theorizing. Nor did the part about a military raid on servers have any truth to it either.

Around the time of the 2004 election, there were similar conspiracy theories, on the Democratic side, about Diebold, a company that produced voting machine technology at the time and was said to have ties to the Republican Party. That theory, also, was never substantiated in any way.

Stephen Silver, a technology writer for The National Interest, is a journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to Philly Voice, Philadelphia Weekly, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Living Life Fearless, Backstage magazine, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.

Image: Reuters