Baseless claims that voting machines made by Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic are being used to rig voting in Brazil are circulating online and in far-right media in the U.S. — even though neither company's hardware or software is being used in the current election there.
It's the latest example of how debunked election fraud narratives are going international. In many cases, the false claims about Brazil are being pushed in English to American audiences by right-wing influencers and conservative media sites who falsely assert that Donald Trump won the 2020 U.S. presidential election and appear to be planting the idea that similar fraud will occur in the upcoming midterms.
The deceptive narratives feature two companies that were targeted by American conspiracists, who falsely claimed their voting software was used to flip votes from Trump to Joe Biden in 2020.
Dominion and Smartmatic have filed multiple lawsuits against Trump supporters and right-wing media channels that advanced the falsehoods. But despite repeated debunkings, the companies' names have become shorthand for election fraud.
"It shows just how sticky these narratives are," said Lee Foster, senior vice president for analysis at Alethea Group, which helps companies detect and mitigate false and misleading claims.
"Once they gain traction in a particular place, like they did in the U.S. presidential election in 2020, people will start applying those [narratives] to other kinds of events and build out...
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