Clinton backer George Soros does not own voting machines in 16 states. According to at least a dozen fringe political blogs, Clinton already has this election bagged: Her friend George Soros, they claim, will rig the election through his electronic voting firm Smartmatic. Last week, that rumor went so viral that one concerned voter petitioned Congress to convene an emergency session on it. Nearly 25,000 people have since signed on, all apparently unaware that Soros does not own Smartmatic.
It’s easy to see how this one spun out of control, because there is a (tenuous, mundane) connection between Soros and the London-based technology company. The company’s actual owner, Lord Mark Malloch-Brown, sits on one of the boards of the Open Society Foundations, a philanthropic organization founded by Soros. But OSF has 22 boards, with dozens of members between them. And Soros has never worked for or had an ownership stake in this specific firm, Smartmatic. Even if he had, it’s pretty much beside the point, since Smartmatic will not be in use in the United States during the 2016 elections.
Ultimately, this is a big distraction from the real problem with American voting machines — the fact that many are old, outdated and subject to error/attack. If you want to petition Congress for something, maybe try asking them to allocate funds for voting technology improvements.