The information final week that Dominion Voting Techniques was bought by the founder and CEO of Knowink, a Missouri-based maker of digital ballot books, has left election integrity activists confused over what, if something, this might imply for voters and the integrity of US elections.
The corporate, acquired by Scott Leiendecker, a former Republican Social gathering operative and election director in Missouri before founding Knowink, mentioned in a press launch that he was rebranding Dominion, which has headquarters in Canada and the United States, underneath the title Liberty Vote “in a daring and historic transfer to remodel and enhance election integrity in America” and to distance the firm from false allegations made beforehand by President Donald Trump and his supporters that the firm had rigged the 2020 presidential election to give the win to President Joe Biden.
The Liberty launch mentioned that the rebranded firm might be one hundred pc American-owned, that it’ll have a “paper poll focus” that leverages hand-marked paper ballots, will “prioritize facilitating third-party auditing,” and is “dedicated to home staffing and software program growth.” The press launch offered no details, nonetheless, to clarify what this implies in apply.
Dominion, the second main supplier of voting machines in the US, whose techniques are utilized in 27 states—together with the complete state of Georgia—has developed its software program in Canada and Belgrade, Serbia, for twenty years. A search on LinkedIn reveals quite a few programmers and different staff in Serbia who declare to be employed by the firm.
The Liberty assertion does not say whether or not the firm plans to rewrite code developed by these international staff—which might doubtlessly contain rewriting a whole bunch of hundreds of traces of code—or whether or not the firm will transfer international builders to the US or substitute them with American programmers. (Dominion has a US headquarters in Colorado.) A Liberty official, who agreed to communicate on the situation that they not be named, advised WIRED solely that Leiendecker “is dedicated to one hundred pc … home staffing and software program growth.” An unnamed supply advised CNN, nonetheless, that Liberty will continue to have a presence in Canada, the place its machines are used throughout the nation.
Philip Stark, professor of statistics at UC Berkeley and a longtime election-integrity advocate, says Liberty’s assurance about domestic-only staff is a crimson herring. “If the declare is that this is one way or the other a safety measure, it isn’t. As a result of programmers based mostly in the US additionally … could also be keen on undermining or altering election integrity,” he tells WIRED.
With regard to third-party audits talked about in the press launch, a Liberty official advised WIRED this implies the firm will conduct a “third-party, top-to-bottom, unbiased evaluation of [Dominion] software program and gear in a well timed method and can work intently with federal and state certification companies and report any vulnerabilities” to give voters assurance in the machines and the outcomes they produce. The corporate didn’t say when this evaluation would happen, however a Liberty consultant told Axios it will occur forward of subsequent 12 months’s midterm elections, and the firm would “rebuild or retire” machines as wanted.
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