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With the advent of electronic voting systems — and public unease with casting ballots that are not tangible physical objects — every election cycle brings rumors that some individual or group with a heavy investment in the outcome of the election owns or controls the machines that record and count votes — and those parties will use their powers to rig the voting systems they control to ensure the election outcome conforms to their preferred results. Billionaire business magnate George Soros was tagged in such rumors in 2012, and he was back in 2016 as the subject of articles by disreputable web sites such as the Daily Caller falsely claiming that Soros' ties to the Smartmatic company, purportedly the manufacturer of voting machines used in 16 states, put him in a position to rig the election in Hillary Clinton's favor: George Soros has no hand in the management or ownership of Smartmatic. As is typical of such claims, this one is based on nothing more than the most tenuous of connections — namely that among the number of non-profit boards on which Smartmatic Chairman Lord Mark Malloch-Brown sits is the Global Board of the Open Society Foundation, an international grantmaking network founded by George Soros. That fact that one of the many people on one of the many boards of one of the many organizations with which George Soros (a large Clinton donor) is involved also happens to chair an electronic voting company is taken as proof enough by conspirators that George Soros has the means, motive, and intent to commit a massive act of voting fraud. And, despite being the multinational billionaire business magnate that he is, Soros utterly lacks the common sense not to rig an election through a confederate so obviously connected to him. As is also typical of such claims, those who propagate them mistakenly assume that every company in the business of providing electronic voting services is producing machines that record and count votes, which isn't the case — such services can include anything from providing streamlined systems for reporting election results to the press to automating the process of voter authentication. In this case the assertion that Smartmatic's voting machines will be used in 16 crucial states is a false one, apparently a misinterpretation of a statement on Smartmatic's web site touting that the company had previously offered unspecified technology and support services to the Electoral Commissions of 307 counties in 16 States — a statement that didn't say that Smartmatic supplied voting machines used in all if those states, or that Smartmatic was even currently working with any of those states in any capacity. Indeed, the Case Studies section Smartmatic's web site chronicles their primarily dealing in providing equipment and services for foreign elections — there's no mention of Smartmatic's being involved in U.S. elections beyond providing a voting system for a Utah state Republican caucus in March of 2016 and pilot testing an ePen for capturing provisional envelopes and vote-by-mail ballots in parts of Los Angeles County. In fact, a search using Verified Voting shows that not a single one of the listed 16 states is using voting machines provided by Smartmatic in the upcoming election — Smartmatic isn't even listed as a vendor of any voting machines being used in any state. Nonetheless, the false rumor has grown so prevalent that Smartmatic has addressed it themselves on their web site, in a page that includes a statement confirming that no Smartmatic technology is being used in any state during the 2016 U.S. presidential election: George Soros' philanthropic organization comprises 22 different boards, but Smartmatic's chairman sits on only one of them. Soros himself has never worked for, or held an ownership share in, Smartmatic.
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