Excerpted from Media Matters: FoxNews.com recently promoted the internet-based conspiracy theory that financier and philanthropist George Soros will somehow corrupt vote counting in the United States through a Spanish company, Scytl, “that Soros owns a big share of.” The conspiracy is false: Soros has no involvement or investments in the company.
During the May 14 edition of the FoxNews.com program Campaign Insiders, Doug Schoen read co-host Pat Caddell a viewer question asking if “there was any truth to the report that a Spanish company doing the vote count — counting for the U.S. national election, has been engaged to do that and that it is a Soros-controlled.”
After admitting that he hasn’t “done enough work on it,” Caddell still claimed Soros was “an investor in it” and that “this raises a problem”:
CADDELL: I haven’t done enough work on it, but my understanding is he’s an investor in it, and it’s very involved in many of the places which are used for vote counting. And this raises a problem because in the electronic ages, we find with Twitter and everything else, the danger of how to manipulate voting machines, electronic machines now, is so much greater than the old days when you had the old, you know, pull a lever.
Co-host John LeBoutillier, a conspiracy theorist and former Republican congressman, later expanded on the conspiracy, stating: “I think in this charge, was that it’s a Spanish company that Soros owns a big share of, has bought this thing called SOE, which is involved in the vote counting in Florida.” LeBoutillier added that “if there’s any chance that’s true” the Florida government should investigate — a point Caddell agreed with.
“George Soros has nothing to do with Scytl,” said Michelle Shafer, director of communications & government affairs at Scytl USA & SOE Software, in an email to Media Matters.
“There is absolutely no relationship there. He is not an owner of or investor in Scytl, nor does he have anything to do with SOE Software, a Tampa, Florida based provider of election technology solutions, purchased by Scytl earlier this year. I am not sure where this rumor started but it is completely false and without merit.” - CONTINUE READING
