Dominion Voting Systems explained why it backed out of Friday's hearing at the last minute with Pennsylvania lawmakers. The explanation came after state Rep. Seth Grove lashed out at the company, which is at the center of voter fraud allegations perpetrated by President Donald Trump.
Dominion was expected to testify and answer to the bipartisan House Government Oversight Committee. Following its decision to pull out of the hearing, the committee's Republican chairman Grove held a press conference and questioned the company's decision to withdraw itself from the hearing. Dominion's voting machines were used in 14 counties in Pennsylvania.
"If Dominion's products were successful and operate as they were supposed to, why wouldn't Dominion take the opportunity to publicly review its success," Grove said. "How hard is it to say our ballot machines worked exactly as promised and they are 100 percent accurate?"
Following the criticism, Dominion issued a statement to Fox 56 saying it agreed with the lawmakers to talk about how smooth the presidential election was conducted in 14 counties where their voting machines were used. However, the company decided to withdraw from the hearing after lawsuits and accusations began to crop up.
"We had agreed to discuss Pennsylvania's election process and the fact that election officials in the fourteen customer counties that we support had enjoyed a smooth and successful election," Dominion said. "However, as we await the opportunity to debunk the baseless conspiracy theories being offered about Dominion and its voting systems in a court of law based on yesterday's press conference claims that litigation is coming, we had to ask for a postponement of the discussion."
Dominion is one of the largest companies in the U.S. to provide election hardware and software to local governments and over 30 states use its voting machines to scan ballots and tabulate votes. Republicans have alleged the company of manipulation of votes after a human error transferred thousands of Republican votes to Democrat votes in Antrim County, Michigan on Nov. 4.
The miscount was rectified immediately, according to Michigan election officials. However, far-right forums made baseless claims that the software system malfunctioned in favor of Democrat Joe Biden that led to Trump's loss in the state — even though the officials clarified the miscalculation was a human error and not a software issue.
The voter fraud allegations prompted Dominion to issue a statement dismissing claims of malfunctioned software or last-minute unauthorized update of the software ahead of the crucial elections. It clarified that it was a non-partisan U.S. company and that there were no software glitches and that the ballots were tabulated accurately.
