FACT CHECK: No, Myanmar Did Not Use Dominion Voting Systems In Its November 2020 Election

Trevor Schakohl, Elias Atienza | Contributor

A viral Facebook post shared over 600 times claims Myanmar used Dominion Voting Systems for its November 2020 election.

Verdict: False

The election technology firm’s systems have never been used in Myanmar, according to a Dominion Voting Systems spokesperson. In Myanmar, voters use paper ballots that are counted by hand.

Fact Check:

The Feb. 1 post features a photo of the National League for Democracy Party’s Aung San Suu Kyi with former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The text accompanying the picture attempts to link Dominion Voting Systems, an election technology firm that has been a popular target for misinformation, to Myanmar’s November 2020 election.

“The White House is freaking out after Myanmar Military arrests political leaders for Election Fraud in their November 8 elections. Myanmar used Dominion Voting Systems,” claims the Facebook post.

Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party won 83 percent of available parliamentary seats in the November election, which the army alleged had fraud, according to the U.S. News & World Report. Myanmar’s election commission rejected the military’s fraud allegations. The military staged a coup on Feb. 1, detaining Suu Kyi and other elected officials, The Washington Post reported.

Check Your Fact didn’t find any evidence in media reports that Myanmar used Dominion Voting Systems in its election. A spokesperson for Dominion Voting Systems also confirmed the post’s claim is false.

“This is a completely false claim,” the Dominion Voting Systems spokesperson told Check Your Fact via email. “Dominion systems have never been used in Myanmar at any time.” (RELATED: Does Joe Biden’s Brother-In-Law Own Dominion Voting Systems?)

A European Union-funded report from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance outlines the voting process in Myanmar’s 2020 general election. The report, which does not mention Dominion Voting Systems, indicates that voters in Myanmar cast paper ballots and that the ballots are hand-counted. Photos of voters casting their paper ballots in Myanmar’s November 2020 election can be found on Getty Images.

In a Feb. 1 statement, President Joe Biden called the military takeover in Myanmar a “direct assault on the country’s transition to democracy,” saying that “force should never seek to overrule the will of the people or attempt to erase the outcome of a credible election” in a democracy.

Trevor Schakohl, Elias Atienza

Contributor

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