The media wants you to believe that there aren't issues with Dominion voting systems. But the company's history of bipartisan criticisms reveals a different story.
Dominion Didn't Meet Texas's Security Standards
In early January of this year, Dominion made its third attempt to regulate elections in Texas. Much like their prior two attempts, the software was rejected due to security concerns.
The Texas Secretary of State noted the following in a document from early January:
"The examiner reports identified multiple hardware and software issues that preclude the Office of the Texas Secretary of State from determining that the Democracy Suite 5.5-A system satisfies each of the voting-system requirements set forth in the Texas Election Code. Specifically, the examiner reports raise concerns about whether the Democracy Suite 5.5-A system is suitable for its intended purpose; operates efficiently and accurately; and is safe from fraudulent or unauthorized manipulation. Therefore, the Democracy Suite 5.5-A system and corresponding hardware devices do not meet the standards for certification prescribed by Section 122.001 of the Texas Election Code."
Democrat Senators Tried To Warn Us
In December 2019, Democrats including Elizabeth Warren had the following to say regarding Dominion's voting machines, specifically calling out vote switching, in a letter they'd written:
"In 2018 alone 'voters in South Carolina [were] reporting machines that switched their votes after they'd inputted them, scanners [were] rejecting paper ballots in Missouri, and busted machines [were] causing long lines in Indiana.' In addition, researchers recently uncovered previously undisclosed vulnerabilities in 'nearly three dozen backend election systems in 10 states.' And, just this year, after the Democratic candidate's electronic tally showed he received an improbable 164 votes out of 55,000 cast in a Pennsylvania state judicial election in 2019, the county's Republican Chairwoman said, '[n]othing went right on Election Day. Everything went wrong. That's a problem.' These problems threaten the integrity of our elections and demonstrate the importance of election systems that are strong, durable, and not vulnerable to attack."
Source: Warren.Senate
Chinese Device Components
Also taking place in early 2020, the House of Representatives Committee held a hearing entitled "2020 Election Security-Perspectives from Voting System Vendors and Experts". Among those in attendance was the head of Dominion Voting Systems who, while in attendance, admitted to having Chinese-made components in their machines:
"Dominion Voting Systems CEO John Poulos and Hart InterCivic President Julie Mathis said their companies use Chinese-made LCD screen components, chip capacitors and resistors, and argued that in some cases there's no option for manufacturing them in the United States."
Ties to The Clinton Foundation & Nancy Pelosi
Nadeam Elshami, an aide to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was hired in mid-2019 by Dominion when they hired Brownstein Farber Hyatt & Schreck as a lobbying firm.
Separately, The Washington Post reported that Dominion had made up to $50,000 in donations to the Clinton Foundation. Ties were further strengthened by Dominion's ties to the Clinton Global Initiative by way of the Delian Project. A project described by the Clinton Foundation as follows:
"In 2014, Dominion Voting committed to providing emerging and post-conflict democracies with access to voting technology through its philanthropic support to the DELIAN Project, as many emerging democracies suffer from post-electoral violence due to the delay in the publishing of election results. Over the next three years, Dominion Voting will support election technology pilots with donated Automated Voting Machines (AVM), providing an improved electoral process, and therefore safer elections. As a large number of election staff are women, there will be an emphasis on training women, who will be the first to benefit from the skills transfer training and use of AVMs. It is estimated that 100 women will directly benefit from election technology skills training per pilot election."
Sources: Bloomberg Government, Washington Post, Clinton Foundation
The New York Times & Award-Winning Computer Scientist Demonstrated Vulnerabilities
Computer scientist Alex Halderman teamed with the New York Times in April of 2018 to put on a mock election with the specific purpose of demonstrating the issues and vulnerabilities of Dominion's voting machines.
"I'm here to tell you that the electronic voting machines Americans got to solve the problem of voting integrity, they turned out to be an awful idea. That's because people like me can hack them all too easily. "Our highly computerized election infrastructure is vulnerable to sabotage and even to cyberattacks that could change votes."
Halderman, who was also called on by a US Senate Intelligence Committee in June of 2017, also had the following to say about the voting machines then:
What we found was disturbing: we could reprogram the machine to invisibly cause any candidate to win. We also created malicious software — vote-stealing code — that could spread from machine-to-machine like a computer virus, and silently change the election outcome.
Sources: NYTimes, UMich.edu, Intelligence.Senate
Vendors Have Data Access
Eric Coomer, Vice President of Engineering for Dominion Voting, proudly proclaimed that vendors could access the data containing votes quite easily. When asked if it was possible to circumvent elections software and specifically view/modify the data, Coomer's said the following:
"Vendors, election officials, and others who need to be granted access." [can access the data.]
Based on this incredibly concerning information - that vendors can access and make changes to data if "granted access", Sharon Meroni of Defend the Vote said the following:
"This is explosive information. Dr. Coomer's statement is an admission that various vendors, election officials, and others have access to the back-end data tables that permit bypassing the operating system's configuration. It is notable that when someone accesses these systems from a data table, their actions are not logged by the system; thereby making detection much more problematic. This contradicts Dr. Coomer's assurances that the system is secure."
Sources: The Post & Email, The Post & Email
Smartmatic & Ties to Venezuela's Fraudulent Elections
The Committee on Foreign Investment launched an investigation in late 2006 to determine if Smartmatic, a partner/parent company/company with clear ties to Dominion, had any direct ties to the Venezuelan government. The Venezuelan government is known for rigging elections to ensure their socialist leaders can take over. The New York Times reported the findings of that investigation as follows:
"The role of the young Venezuelan engineers who founded Smartmatic has become less visible in public documents as the company has been restructured into an elaborate web of offshore companies and foreign trusts."
With then-Democratic Representative Carolyn B. Maloney noting that "The government should know who owns our voting machines; that is a national security concern".
"The concerns about possible ties between the owners of Smartmatic and the Chávez government have been well known to United States foreign-policy officials since before the 2004 recall election in which Mr. Chávez, a strong ally of President Fidel Castro of Cuba, won by an official margin of nearly 20 percent...."
Sources: NYTimes