In November, after Aung San Suu Kyi's ruling party in Myanmar claimed an overwhelming victory in the country's parliamentary election, the military-backed opposition alleged election fraud.
Even though Myanmar's election officials rejected those claims, On Feb. 1, the military seized control of the country and arrested Suu Kyi among other members of the party.
Similar election fraud claims were made by Donald Trump in the wake of President Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 U.S. presidential election, where Trump supporters made baseless allegations of voter fraud and sought to overturn the results of the election. Many of those claims involved Dominion Voting Systems – a company that makes electronic voting hardware and software, including voting machines.
Now, similar assertions are being made on social media that military leaders in Myanmar arrested Suu Kyi and other political leaders for election fraud and that Dominion Voting Systems were used in the country's parliamentary election in November.
"The White House is freaking out after Myanmar military arrests political leaders for election fraud in their November 8 elections," one Facebook post read. "Myanmar used Dominion Voting Systems." The post featured pictures of former U.S. President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Suu Kyi.
Fact-Check
However, there is no evidence to back this claim. Fact-checking website Snopes also confirmed that Dominion Voting Systems were not used in Myanmar during the election process.
According to the website, Myanmar used paper ballots that were counted by hand and no electronic machines appeared to have been involved.According to the Myanmar Electoral Resource and Information Network and a fact-sheet for the Myanmar 2020 general election, at the polling booths, voters were presented with a ballot paper. Voters then had to mark the box alongside their preferred candidate's name on each paper before casting their vote in a ballot box.
Furthermore, advance voting was made available for those who could not attend a polling booth on Election Day including the sick, elderly, military and civil service officials etc. These voters had to cast their votes in advance and a voting team visited their home so they could cast their vote.
Another fact-checking website, Politifact, also reached out to Dominion for a statement and a spokesperson for the company categorically denied the claims. "This is a completely false claim. Dominion systems have never been used in Myanmar at any time," the spokesperson said.
