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Fractional Voting — Alleged Dominion Vote-Weighting Method

FieldDetail
MethodFractional vote weighting in electronic voting systems
VectorDigital / Voting Machine Software
First Alleged2020 U.S. Presidential Election (Ware County, Georgia)
Scale PotentialStatewide or national if embedded in vendor software
Detection DifficultyVery Difficult — requires forensic machine access and log analysis
Evidence RatingDEBATED
Primary MachineDominion ImageCast Precinct; also alleged in legacy ES&S/Diebold GEMS

Summary

"Fractional voting" or "weighted voting" refers to the allegation that certain electronic voting systems — particularly Dominion Voting Systems software — can assign decimal-point weights to ballots rather than counting each vote as exactly 1.0. Under this theory, a Trump ballot might be counted as 0.87 votes and a Biden ballot as 1.13 votes, giving one candidate a systematic advantage invisible to observers watching a running tally.

This theory was prominently featured in the post-2020 election legal campaign led by attorney Sidney Powell and was confirmed by @Real_RobN (April 7, 2026) in connection with a forensic examination of Dominion machines in Ware County, Georgia.


How It Allegedly Works

According to election integrity advocates:

  1. Dominion's software stores ballot values as floating-point numbers rather than integers
  2. A system administrator can set vote "weights" (e.g., 0.87 for one candidate, 1.13 for another) that are applied during tabulation
  3. The cumulative effect matches a desired outcome before results are reported
  4. Hand-count audits may not detect this if auditors simply recount paper ballots that were themselves counted by the same machines — the manipulation occurs at the tabulation layer

This theory is sometimes called the "GEMS system exploit" — a reference to the Global Election Management System, an older Diebold/ES&S product where analyst Bev Harris (BlackBoxVoting.org) demonstrated a fractional weighting feature as early as 2004, predating Dominion.


Documented Instances Alleged

LocationYearFindingOfficial Response
Ware County, Georgia2020Trump 87%, Biden 113% in reported dataSoS: artifact of adjudication/test mode, not live count
Antrim County, Michigan202068.05% error rate in adjudication logsSoS: human error in ballot programming
Fulton County, Georgia (alleged by Sidney Powell)2020Counterfeit ballots + manipulation claimedSoS: hand recount confirmed results

The Bev Harris / GEMS Research

Election security researcher Bev Harris (BlackBoxVoting.org) documented a fractional vote weighting feature in the GEMS tabulation software (used by Diebold/ES&S) as far back as 2003–2004. She demonstrated that GEMS allowed administrators to set vote "decimalization" affecting weights. This research predates Dominion but established the theoretical and architectural basis that later advocates applied to newer systems.


Counterarguments

  • Dominion states categorically that their systems count only whole votes in general elections; fractional numbers in some outputs relate to weighted primary races — a legally authorized feature in certain jurisdictions
  • Georgia's November 2020 hand recount confirmed machine-reported totals in all counties including Ware County
  • The Cyber Ninjas 2021 audit of Maricopa County, Arizona — commissioned by Republican state senators — confirmed Biden's margin, finding no evidence of fractional weighting
  • Multiple independent computer scientists examining Dominion source code have found no fractional weighting mechanism for general election ballots
  • Courts dismissed Sidney Powell's lawsuits citing fractional voting for lack of admissible evidence

Why This Theory Persists

  • If fractional weighting were embedded at the software level, a paper recount would not necessarily detect it if the paper ballot count was originally set by the same machine
  • The architectural possibility (floating-point storage) is real; the question is whether it is activated
  • Election security experts broadly agree that internet connectivity and remote access are genuine Dominion system vulnerabilities — even if fractional voting specifically has not been proven
  • The Bev Harris GEMS research demonstrated the capability existed in predecessor systems


Sources


Last Updated: 2026-04-08 — Added @TheSCIF video post (April 8, 2026) as additional source amplifying Ware County fractional voting claim

This information was compiled by Claude AI research.