Allegations Made against Dominion Voting Systems

Professor Michael Herron, the Remsen 1943 Professor of Quantitative Social Science and Chair of QSS, is the author of a recently published article, "Allegations Made against Dominion Voting Systems and the 2020 Presidential Election in Wisconsin," in Election Law Journal. Professor Herron will be teaching QSS 18 Game Theory this Fall 2023.

The abstract of the article is as follows:

Abstract:
One of most extensive allegations of vote manipulation in the 2020 presidential election revolved around technology manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems. In particular, then-incumbent president Donald Trump claimed in the election's aftermath that Dominion machines used across the country led to the deletion of millions of votes cast for him. Given the number of jurisdictions across the United States that rely on Dominion technology, this is conceivably a very damaging claim. To assess the allegation against Dominion, this article draws on election returns from Wisconsin, a state in which many municipalities changed voting technologies between the 2016 and 2020 general elections, some switching to Dominion technology prior to 2020 and others transitioning away from it. Holding jurisdiction features constant, there is no evidence in Wisconsin that Trump's 2020 vote share was low in jurisdictions using Dominion technology in 2020, and there is similarly no evidence that Republican congressional candidates in Wisconsin had lower vote share in jurisdictions with Dominion technology in 2020. Wisconsin thus offers no evidence that Dominion voting technology harmed Donald Trump in 2020 and thus no evidence that the allegation of vote manipulation leveled against Dominion Voting Systems was anything but a conspiracy theory.