Voting gear firm Dominion Voting Methods, a target of false conspiracy theories from President Donald Trump and his supporters for the reason that 2020 election, has been purchased by a agency run by a former Republican elections official, the brand new firm introduced Thursday.
The newly shaped firm, Liberty Vote, additionally vowed to comply with the executive order Trump signed final spring in search of sweeping changes to election insurance policies that a number of judges have placed on maintain for violating the Constitution.
KNOWiNK, a St. Louis-based supplier of digital ballot books that permit election officers to verify voter data, introduced the deal and the identify change. In a attainable nod to a groundless conspiracy theory that linked Dominion to the late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, the discharge highlighted that the corporate would develop into “100% American-owned.”
The announcement additionally quotes KNOWiNK’s proprietor, former St. Louis elections director Scott Leiendecker, as vowing to supply “election know-how that prioritizes paper-based transparency,” one of many longtime calls for of election conspiracy theorists. Virtually all U.S. voting gear already leaves a paper path.
Dominion’s former CEO confirmed the sale in a single-sentence assertion on Thursday: “Liberty Vote has acquired Dominion Voting Methods,” John Poulos mentioned.
The discharge from the brand new firm vows to reintroduce “hand-marked paper ballots” and modify firm insurance policies to comply with Trump’s government order on voting procedures, which isn’t in impact as a result of judges have dominated that Trump doesn’t have the power to mandate them. A part of the president’s order sought to ban voting gear that produces a paper file with “a barcode or quick-response code” — gear that’s presently in use in a whole bunch of counties across 19 states.
Denver-based Dominion was on the coronary heart of among the most fevered conspiracy theories about Trump’s loss to Democrat Joe Biden within the 2020 election., These false allegations sparked quite a lot of defamation lawsuits towards conservative-leaning media and the president’s allies, together with a settlement in 2023 wherein Fox Information agreed to pay Dominion $787 million and one this yr that Newsmax settled for $67 million.
The announcement from the brand new firm doesn’t disclose the price of the transaction, however a spokesman mentioned all the cash was put up by Leiendecker. Each firms concerned are privately held.
The false allegations towards Dominion made its model poisonous in lots of Republican-leaning states and counties. However voting machine firms are normally cautious about making overt political statements, provided that the marketplace for their gear is break up between locations underneath Republican and Democratic management.
The statements by Liberty Vote saying it would align with Trump’s government order, which has been challenged by Democratic state attorneys general, the Democratic National Committee and an array of voting and civil rights teams, might result in issues in blue states that presently use Dominion gear.
However some election officers mentioned Thursday that KNOWiNK had appeared to avoid 2020 conspiracy theories and acted like a typical, nonpartisan agency.
“They’ve an excellent fame within the area,” Stephen Richer, a Republican who was focused by Trump and his allies when he served as the highest elections official in Arizona’s Maricopa County, which incorporates Phoenix.
Regardless of years of detailed debunking of the Dominion conspiracy theories, Trump has continued to repeat them at the same time as not too long ago as a couple of weeks in the past, when he vowed to get rid of voting machines. The president doesn’t have the facility to try this as a result of the Structure provides states and Congress the authority to set election and voting guidelines.
