By Zachary Stieber
An election official in Wisconsin testified Friday that there’s no evidence of fraud related to Dominion Voting Systems machines.
“In Wisconsin, there were no dumps of ballots during the night none. There is no evidence of any fraud related to Dominion voting machines in Wisconsin, none. The counting in Wisconsin did not stop and restart. Election observers were allowed to be present throughout the election day and election night proceedings. The number of voters on our poll books match the number of ballots cast,” Dean Knudson, a Republican on the Wisconsin Elections Commission, said during a state legislative hearing on the election.
“There has been no credible evidence presented to the elect elections commission that any of these problems occurred in Wisconsin,” he added.
Dominion has been the focus of a number of election irregularity claims, including some in lawsuits. Over half of the states in the country use its products to process ballots and do other election-related processes.
Knudson told legislators that the commission audited 15 percent of the Dominion machines in the state this year, and the equipment tested well with one exception.
“One type of Dominion equipment was counting where you had folded the ballot it created a crease when the crease went through the bubble for the right in, that counted as a vote. If you had also voted for the Republican, that counted as a double vote, and threw those out. It happened in the city of Oshkosh and it happened in Lac du flambeau, and we’re going to work on that. It didn’t change the outcome of either of those elections,” he said.
Dominion says on its website that there’s no evidence of its systems vote switching or experiencing errors. “All baseless claims have been debunked by election officials, subject matter experts, and third-party fact checkers. No evidence whatsoever has been offered to support claims that there was a systemic problem with vote-counting machines,” it states.
Rep. Ron Tusler, a Republican who chairs the state Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections, said in his opening remarks at the hearing that concerns were raised about whether there was any fraud as a result of the software and equipment associated with Dominion or any other company.
Michael Dean, an attorney who has been reviewing irregularity claims, told lawmakers that from what he’s seen, there’s “reasonable evidence to at least warrant a meaningful investigation, whether there were in fact, interference by individuals involved with Dominion Voting Systems, ESS, Smartmatic and so on,” he said.
Bart Williams, a poll observer, urged officials to take action regarding Dominion.
“Do your jobs insist on a full forensic audit of all voting machines, especially Dominion ones, and voting records,” he said.
Knudson earlier this month called for the elections commission chair to resign, accusing her of rushing to certify the election results even though the commission didn’t have enough information about the audit on the Dominion brand voting machines used in the presidential election. During the hearing, he proposed five different areas where he believes legislation is needed to clarify and improve election laws.
Among them were cleaning up the voter rolls every year, making language about absentee ballot rules clearer, and clarify how many machines must be audited during the post-election process.
The hearing took place on the same day that an attorney in Michigan said information he obtained from a forensic audit of a Dominion machine showed a vote flip was due to a computer program from the company, not human error.
