Dominion Voting Systems was sold to Liberty Vote. Dominion was at the center of fraudulent claims of voter fraud by President Trump and his allies during the 2020 election.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Dominion Voting Systems, the election technology company that is at the heart of countless conspiracy theories following the 2020 election, has been sold. Dominion machines are used in more than half the states, and the company’s buyer appears to be relying on some of President Trump’s comments regarding voting. NPR voting correspondent Miles Parks joins us in our studios. Miles, thank you very much for being with us.
MILES PARKS, BYLINE: Hey, Scott. Thanks for inviting me.
SIMON: Dominion became what constitutes a household name after the 2020 election. Remind us why.
PARKS: Well, if you think back to November 2020, the Trump campaign, influential people on the right, were really throwing spaghetti at the wall, trying to come up with a conspiracy theory to explain why President Trump didn’t win that election. You know, Italian satellites, late night ballots, and Dominion really got mixed up in this. Here’s former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell speaking a little after the election on Fox Business.
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SIDNEY POWELL: I look forward to presenting all the evidence we’ve gathered about Dominion, starting with the fact that it was created to produce altered voting results in Venezuela for Hugo Chavez.
PARKS: So you get a taste of the kind of accusations that have been made against the company, even though none of them have ever been proven. Fox News ended up settling a defamation lawsuit with the company for nearly $800 million, and far-right news outlet Newsmax also settled a similar lawsuit for more than $60 million.
SIMON: Now, I guess none of this can be good for business. Is this why the company was sold?
PARKS: Well, Dominion hasn’t told us about the sale, but I can say that the rumors haven’t completely died and have clearly had an impact on the company. You know, in 2023, a Republican-leaning county in California actually voted to get rid of its Dominion counting machines in favor of manually counting ballots, even though that would triple their costs. And even this year, Trump Justice Department officials contacted local employees in Missouri wanting access to their Dominion machines. We’re not sure why, but it’s clear that there is still a lot of skepticism about this company among those who deny the 2020 results.
SIMON: And, of course, that could be a big task for the buyer of Dominion, who is he? And why do they buy?
PARKS: That’s true. So this is someone who wants to – who already owns a voting equipment company and wants to expand. His name is Scott Leiendecker and he has worked in the elections field for decades, first as a civil servant. He was Republican elections director in St. Louis. And then, in 2011, he started a company called KNOWiNK, which became the largest provider of vote recording equipment in the country. To acquire Dominion, Leiendecker launched a new company called Liberty Vote, and where it gets really interesting is how much he seems to rely on the right’s language about election integrity.
SIMON: Has the Liberty Vote detailed how they plan to change Dominion?
PARKS: So it’s still a little unclear, but there’s definitely a rebranding going on. The announcement explicitly stated that they would only use domestic staff and software development, which seemed to give a nod to the conspiracy theories about Venezuela that we heard about earlier. And the announcement also said the country would prioritize compliance with President Trump’s March executive order on voting.
But just to be clear, it’s not like Dominion machines are going away. You know, government contracts are already in place and, in many cases, for many years. So, counties that have these vote tabulators will likely still use them in the 2026 elections. It will then be interesting to see how election integrity activists – the most ardent on the right – take this news, given that it is, at this point, only a change in ownership.
SIMON: NPR’s Miles Parks. Thank you for being with us this morning.
PARKS: Thank you, Scott.
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