Prominent pollster spreads Dominion voting machine misinformation

[cigaretteman]

“Is it possible that @dominionvoting is admitting to something in court that they thus far have NOT admitted to their US contract clients & millions of voters? The American electorate deserves to know. And right now please.”

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— Social media account of Rasmussen Reports, which describes itself as a nonpartisan electronic media company that conducts polls, May 17

With almost a half million followers on X, the pollster Rasmussen has a wide reach. Former president Donald Trump repeatedly cited its polls when he was president as it consistently showed a higher approval rating for him than other pollsters.
Now Rasmussen’s social media account is fanning previously debunked claims that Dominion Voting Systems machines could somehow be manipulated via the internet.

Rasmussen’s source is a former Michigan state senator who traffics in election conspiracy theories and is president of a self-described election integrity group called the Michigan Grassroots Alliance. That former lawmaker cited emails released by a far-right sheriff, who obtained them from an attorney involved in a lawsuit filed by Dominion, despite a protective order agreed to by the parties in the case.


Confused? That’s part of the point. The idea is to create a lot of smoke to make people think there is a fire.

The Facts​

The 2020 presidential contest in Michigan was not especially close. Joe Biden defeated Trump by about 155,000 votes, a margin of almost three percentage points. Yet ever since, former Michigan state senator Patrick Colbeck (R) has made baseless claims about fraud in the presidential election. (He was a term-limited senator when he lost the Republican primary for governor in 2018.) He has especially aimed his ire at Dominion Voting Systems, which has a contract in some counties in the state.

For instance, Colbeck was featured in a 93-minute video that circulated online in December 2020 in which he repeated the false claim that the machines that counted paper ballots were connected to the internet and inaccurately suggested the tabulators could have been hacked. That claim had already been rejected by Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Timothy M. Kenny, who in an opinion rejected an affidavit filed by Colbeck. “No evidence supports Mr. Colbeck’s position,” Kenny wrote. He noted that in a Facebook post before the election, Colbeck said that Democrats were using the pandemic as a cover for fraud, which Kenny said “undermines his credibility as a witness.”


That didn’t deter Colbeck, who continued making so many claims about Dominion that the company in 2021 sent a letter hinting at legal action if he didn’t stop making the claims.

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“You successfully duped thousands of people across Michigan into believing that the 2020 election was stolen through the manipulation of vote counts in Dominion machines, and you have reaped the benefits from it,” Dominion attorneys said in a letter. The missive suggested that the company — which won a $787 million settlement from Fox News and has pursued claims against other election deniers — might take legal action. No lawsuit has yet been filed.

Now Colbeck is claiming vindication. On X, he claimed that in court proceedings, Dominion authenticated documents that show “Dominion machines are designed to connect to internet” and “Dominion employs Serbian developers not subject to thorough background checks.” He added: “We’ve been lied to for years. Now the truth is FINALLY being exposed … IN COURT!” This was one of the posts that Rasmussen Reports circulated to its followers, suggesting Dominion has misled clients and millions of voters.


The documents were released by Sheriff Dar Leaf of Barry County, who posted them on the internet. Stefanie Lambert, a lawyer for former Overstock chief executive Patrick Byrne, has said she gave them to Leaf, alleging they showed evidence of criminal activity. Dominion has filed a billion-dollar defamation suit against Byrne and is now seeking to have Lambert removed from the case for allegedly violating a protective order regarding discovery. “These documents are now being used for the specific purpose of spreading yet more lies about Dominion,” the company said in a legal filing.
Lambert has justified releasing the documents by arguing that Dominion had “inappropriately” abused the existing protective order to hide “law violations” by designating documents as “confidential trade secret/intellectual property.” Federal Magistrate Judge Moxila Upadhyaya, in a hearing in Washington on May 16, ordered Lambert to make every effort to remove leaked documents from social media and other public forums, according to the Detroit News. The judge emphasized that the protective order in the case barred the sharing of confidential documents.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/28/leading-pollster-spreads-dominion-voting-machine-misinformation/

 

[cigaretteman]

In a separate matter, Lambert herself has been charged with illegally breaching voting machines.


In any case, the documents do not prove either of Colbeck’s claims. This is just another example of election deniers grasping at straws. Nothing has changed since Colbeck first stated that the Dominion machines were connected to the internet nearly four years ago.
In Michigan, a handful of jurisdictions require an external modem to transmit preliminary results from a tabulator. (More than 99 percent of Dominion customers do not, according to the company, and instead use devices such as a flash drive.) But even then, the transaction is closed to external connections — and any vote count still can be verified through paper ballots that are transported in secure containers, often with police protection. Dominion employees are not involved, either.

This was all detailed in a report issued by Michigan Senate Republicans in 2021, which said the narrative that vote-counting machines could be manipulated through the internet “is ignorant of multiple levels of the actual election process.”


“The secure cellular modems some clerks use to transmit the unofficial results to the county clerk are not even turned on or connected to the tabulators until after the official results are printed by the individual machine,” the report said. “Upon completion of the election, tabulators print the final results on paper. Clerks then connect a modem and transmit by secure, cellular connection or transfer by flash drive the unofficial results to the county clerk. County clerks then report these unofficial results both locally and to the secretary of state. The secretary of state releases the unofficial results to media and their own page.”
The report also said: “The official results remain on a printed piece of paper at the local clerk’s office and are not alterable to any reverse cyberattack. Most importantly, the paper ballots in the box are available for re-tabulation or recount at any time. Where this was done, no evidence of hacking or attack was ever shown.”

In an email to The Fact Checker, Colbeck insisted he was correct. He noted that last month he submitted a “criminal complaint” against Dominion chief executive John Poulos accusing him of lying under oath before the Michigan Senate Oversight Committee in 2020.


But the complaint is moot. On April 25, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel rejected the request to open a criminal investigation. In a letter to state representatives who forwarded Colbeck’s complaint, she wrote that the documents cited in the complaint “appeared to be a carefully curated snippet of over 2,000 documents publicly shared by criminal defendant Stefanie Lambert in violation of a protective order.”
Colbeck told The Fact Checker that an email showed Poulos in his testimony before the state Senate falsely asserted “that the machines are not designed to connect to the internet and that they are closed systems.”

As is often the case, emails are taken out of context. Colbeck’s claim is based on a 2018 email in which Dominion software engineers based in Serbia engage in a technical discussion concerning a “listener certificate.” There’s not enough detail to fully understand the discussion, but it’s possible the email exchange is about encrypting a secure connection for one of the few clients who appear to require an external modem to transmit preliminary results. At one point, one software developer writes, “when we are sending election results through internet … this is not a closed system anymore.” On X, Colbeck highlighted the word “internet” and in his complaint against Poulos has claimed this means ballot images could be modified via the internet. (Never mind, again, that paper ballots remain available for verification.) In the context of the email exchange, the engineer appears to be emphasizing the need for encryption.


Colbeck also asserted that Poulos misled the Senate committee when he said that the company does extensive background checks on its employees. “The assertions made by one of his foreign engineers not subject to ‘exhaustive background checks’ directly contradicts that statement,” he told The Fact Checker.
The supposed evidence is another email exchange, this time concerning the data privacy laws in Serbia, which he claims shows it is against Serbian law to perform background checks on employees. But the email, sent by an executive in Canada, simply explains that, under data protection rules in Serbia, the local office cannot make such queries after a hire is made, but a background check could be done by the U.S. company if there was an established “rule book” that laid out conditions for employment, including a request for criminal records.

In other words, Colbeck is trying to make a hypothetical become true. There is no evidence of criminal activity or any attempt to interfere with an election by Dominion employees.


When asked why an established polling company would spread misinformation about elections, Mark Mitchell, head pollster for Rasmussen, replied in an email: “As one of the most accurate, INDEPENDENT, pollsters, we need to treat election integrity seriously to maintain our track record. 2. Rasmussen only bring attention to items reported from government entities or part of legal proceedings.” He suggested Dominion needed to address the claims and did not answer questions about why the polling company would give credence to Colbeck.
Asked for comment, Dominion pointed The Fact Checker to the Michigan Senate report that had previously debunked Colbeck’s claims.

The Pinocchio Test​

Rasmussen is falling back on an irresponsible tactic that lets false claims enter the bloodstream of political discourse — just asking questions.
But these questions have been answered, repeatedly. Dominion voting machines aren’t connected to the internet, no matter how many times people who advance conspiracy theories say it. The batch of emails promoted by Colbeck — which were made public in defiance of a court order — do not change the picture at all.
Rasmussen earns Four Pinocchios.

 

[BelemNole]

Rasmussen is a joke. The only people who believe it are Trump and all the HORT cons.

 

[tarheelbybirth]

What?!?! Rasmussen lies?!?!

 

[artradley]

I’m psyc, because I knew who the pollster was before opening this thread.

 

[Chishawk1425]

As posted earlier that RW trash laughed off or failed at personally attacking me yet again