Trump's conspiracies pose 'existential' threat to electronic voting
industry -Smartmatic
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[December 14, 2020] By
Raphael Satter
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Conspiracy theories
about how voting machines were used to stop the re-election of Donald
Trump have not just sapped Americans' faith in the democratic process -
they also pose an existential threat to the market for electronic voting
systems worldwide, an executive with a leading company said.
Antonio Mugica, chief executive of Florida-based Smartmatic, said the
baseless claims circulated by Trump and his allies about Smartmatic and
one of its competitors, Dominion Voting Systems, were having a knock-on
effect outside the United States, with officials in other countries
either reluctant to sign deals or warning that they were reassessing
their contracts.
"I don't think there is one customer in the world that has not come back
to us to tell us either that this is a problem and this could endanger
our future relationship – for existing customers – or that this could
endanger a potential new contract," Mugica said in an interview on
Thursday.
His industry was "collateral damage" in a wider attack on democratic
institutions, he said.
Mugica stopped short of putting a figure on the cost to his business but
said that, in the case of Colombia - a country where he said his company
had spent years trying to get its foot in the door - "I was informed by
my sales force that we are dead in the water because of this situation."
Colombia's election registrar said there had as yet been no negotiations
opened with Smartmatic.
Mugica said the company was doing what it could to beat the
disinformation. A big chunk of its homepage is devoted to pushing back
against the conspiracies, it recently hired Chicago-based defamation
lawyer J. Erik Connolly, and on Friday it wrote to Fox News Channel
demanding the network retract allegations leveled by its guests,
including pro-Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, and hosts
including Lou Dobbs and Maria Bartiromo.
Fox News did not return messages seeking comment. Powell also did not
return messages; a spokesman for the Trump campaign did not return
emails. Giuliani did not return a request for comment.
It is true that machine-assisted voting - either via voter-facing touch
screens or behind-the-scenes ballot tabulation software and digital poll
books - has for years been the subject of persistent worries around
security and reliability.
But there is no sign that the 2020 U.S. election was affected by any
significant or wide-ranging problems, according to elections officials
from both parties - a judgment affirmed by recounts in two swing states,
exhaustive litigation, and an investigation by the U.S. Department of
Justice. International observers endorsed the vote integrity, as did a
variety of officials in Trump's own government, who described it as "the
most secure in American history."
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Antonio Mugica, CEO of Smartmatic, poses near to Houses of
Parliament in London, Britain, December 11, 2020. Picture taken
December 11, 2020. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls
That has not stopped Trump, who has long promoted conspiracy theories, from
continuing to claim without evidence that widespread voter fraud was to blame
for his loss to President-elect Joe Biden on Nov. 3.
Smartmatic - which has provided voting machines, vote tallying software, and
election management systems to more than two dozen countries including Belgium,
Argentina, and Norway - has featured in several of the conspiracies theories
pushed by the president and his allies.
Among those claims are that Smartmatic, acting at the behest of billionaire
investor George Soros or late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, reprogrammed
machines provided by Canada's Dominion Voting Systems to transfer votes to Biden
from Trump.
Smartmatic, however, has no current relationship with Dominion and had almost
nothing to do with November's election. Smartmatic helped tally votes only in
left-leaning Los Angeles County, where Biden's victory was never in doubt.
Such lies about election fraud have become ingrained in the minds of many on the
American right, according to a Reuters/IPSOS poll published last month that
showed half of Republicans believe the election was stolen from Trump.
Versions of the Smartmatic conspiracy have since seeped into other countries
where the company has worked, such as Brazil
https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/
poder/2020/11/empresa-que-forneceu-urnas-para-venezuela-nunca-vendeu-aparelhos-para-brasil.shtml
and the Philippines, Mugica said.
He said the impact of the Trump camp's allegations would be felt well beyond his
company.
"This, for us, is existential," Mugica said. "But it's very big for the entire
industry, and ultimately it's very big for democracy itself."
(Reporting by Raphael Satter; Additional reporting by Julia Symmes Cobb in
Bogota, Colombia; Editing by Chris Sanders and Daniel Wallis)
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