EXCLUSIVE: On Heels of Diebold/Premier Purchase, Canadian eVoting Firm Dominion Also Acquires Sequoia, Lies About Chavez Ties in Announcement

06/22/2010 02:17 pm ET Updated Dec 06, 2017

‘Intellectual Property’ of voting systems still owned by firm linked to Venezuelan President, despite press statement to the contrary

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/exclusive-on-heels-of-die_b_620084?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAH4e-EvKGM__pbguT5mfI8leIxDPH9qgFpiQiSJF5VgSpsdiEHNkA0yt3M3_v0fiUnob8x8v3e_k9G6g2Ay8V_HWVSasefp7uinHTR1JEar-i9FD09A5YMR8BSrGO0j_spDOiSiMUuABBTw_cB7i2DnhCID7Q6IgatkPFV_NEFGW

PLUS: The election official/e-voting company revolving ‘oversight’ door continues to turn…

• • *

Canadian-based Dominion Voting Systems has quietly announced its second acquisition of a major U.S. voting machine company in as many months and, right out of the gate, they’ve lied about it. Not an auspicious beginning for the company which may now, virtually overnight, have become the dominant private e-voting machine company in this country.

In our recent breaking coverage detailing the SEC’s fraud lawsuits filed against Diebold and a number of their top executives — including their former Chief Financial Officer who, as we reported exclusively back in 2007, was the top earner from an apparent insider sell-off at the company just days before its stock would plummet from its all-time high on the announcement of spinning off their troubled election division to a “new” company renamed Premier — we noted that Diebold/Premier’s assets had recently been purchased by a small Canadian firm by the name of Dominion Voting. But Dominion hasn’t stopped there.

Their purchase of Diebold/Premier’s assets was actually made from ES&S, the world’s largest voting machine company, who was forced to divest of the assets they’d purchased from Diebold (previously, the second largest voting machine company in the country) for $5 million last year, as part of an anti-trust suit settlement with the DoJ.

In our coverage, we noted the comment of Dominion CEO John Poulos who, in the company’s press release [PDF] announcing the Diebold/Premier asset acquisition, stated ominously: “We are extremely pleased to conclude this transaction, which…will allow Dominion to expand its capabilities and operational footprint to every corner of the United States.”

Indeed, the DoJ-scuttled ES&S merger with Diebold/Premier had been legally challenged since, among other reasons, the merger of the largest e-voting company with the country’s second largest would have given a single company control of at least 70% of all votes cast in the nation.

What we had replaced for length, however, with the ellipses in Poulos’ quote above, was this [emphasis added]: “We are extremely pleased to conclude this transaction, which will restore much-needed competition to the American voting systems market and will allow Dominion to expand its capabilities and operational footprint to every corner of the United States.”

How much is Poulos actually interested in “restor[ing] much-needed competition” for “the American voting systems market”? Apparently not so much, as according to a company press release [PDF] quietly issued late in the afternoon on Friday, June 4th, Dominion has now also acquired what had previously been the third largest voting machine company in the U.S., Sequoia Voting Systems.

Not surprisingly, that late Friday announcement didn’t say anything at all about “competition”.

Worse, as The BRAD BLOG has confirmed, the new press release from Dominion simply lied about what the company has and hasn’t purchased from Sequoia, a company which had lied themselves, for years, about the real ownership of its proprietary voting systems.

America’s New E-Voting Goliath

>>11551185

(contd)

Given the enormous share of the U.S. voting “market” now potentially controlled by Dominion — and the now-customary revolving door between public and private officials in the “election industry” which now places former Diebold/Premier officials, former Sequoia officials, and even former state election officials at the helm of the private, little-known Canadian firm — it comes as no surprise that Dominion would hope few in the public actually noticed their sudden acquisition of e-voting assets from some 50% of the U.S. “voting market”.

Prior to ES&S’ doomed purchase of Diebold/Premier last September, there were essentially four major election firms divvying up ownership of the U.S. voting market. The very rough breakdown of voting jurisdiction control by those four corporations was as follows:

40% ES&S

30% Diebold/Premier

20% Sequoia

10% Hart Intercivic

Following Dominion’s May acquisition of Diebold/Premier’s assets from ES&S and their subsequent purchase of the entirety of Sequoia Voting Systems announced June 4th, the very rough private ownership of public elections in the U.S. may now stack up as follows:

50% Dominion (Diebold/Premier, Sequoia)

40% ES&S

10% Hart Intercivic

We’re using “very rough” percentages above for a number of reasons. Among them, there are different ways to determine market share here, such as number of jurisdictions vs. number of voters vs. contract worth, etc. Also, many of Diebold’s former customers had already determined to move their contracts to ES&S during the long interim while the DoJ dithered following ES&S’ initial, now-scuttled, acquisition of Diebold/Premier.

As one e-voting industry insider explained to The BRAD BLOG, Dominion purchased the remaining hardware and software assets and potential customer base of Diebold/Premier, but they purchased the actual customer contracts, as well as the hardware and software, in their acquisition of Sequoia.

Dominion’s spokesperson, formerly of Diebold, formerly the Press Secretary for the Secretary of State of Georgia, the unfortunately named (at least for a voting-machine company spokesman) Chris Riggall, confirmed the insider’s take to The BRAD BLOG, responding to our queries by noting Dominion “did not purchase any existing contracts, thus market share,” in their agreement to buy the Diebold/Premier assets.

“Under the agreement,” Riggall explained via email, “jurisdictions operating Premier equipment are given the choice to either continue their existing relationship with ES&S or assign their old contract to Dominion. It’s going to take some time to see how that plays out and what decisions jurisdictions make in regard to their future needs (if any) for support, maintenance, warranties, etc.”

But no matter how the numbers eventually shake out, Dominion is now a serious power-playing Goliath in the U.S. e-voting industry, and potentially even the biggest kid on the block — all in a matter of weeks, with virtually nobody in the public or media paying attention, and even fewer seeming to give a damn about what it all means, and what it all actually amounts to.

Little wonder their press release on the Sequoia purchase mentioned nothing at all about “competition”, just two weeks and change after touting the “restor[ation of] much-needed competition to the American voting systems market” after they’d purchased the assets of Diebold/Premier for $5 million.

Just another day in our bought and paid-for, fully privatized system of “public” elections in the world’s once-greatest democracy.

But wait — the story gets still worse…

>>11551202

(contd)

Whose IP Is It Anyway?

There are a few more points concerning Dominion’s purchase of Sequoia worth flagging here for now. The first, and perhaps most disturbing, concerns the following announcement in Dominion’s press release upon the purchase of Sequoia [emphasis added]:

As part of the transaction, Dominion has acquired Sequoia’s inventory and all intellectual property, including software, firmware and hardware, for Sequoia’s precinct and central count optical scan and DRE voting solutions, including BPS, WinEDS, Edge, Edge2, Advantage, Insight, InsightPlus and 400C systems.

That statement is an out-and-out lie — one which continues to propagate a years-long deception of the public, the media and election officials by Sequoia themselves.

As long time readers of The BRAD BLOG will recall, the matter of the true ownership of the intellectual property (IP) of Sequoia’s voting systems wasn’t at all what the company had represented to the public, to media, to election official customers, and even in courts of law.

As part of a detailed investigative exposé series in 2008, as we broke the story of Hart Intercivic’s quietly attempted hostile takeover of Sequoia, we revealed the fact that — despite representations to the contrary, possibly even to U.S. government investigators — the IP for the vast-majority/near-entirety of Sequoia’s voting systems was actually secretly owned by the Hugo Chavez-tied, Venezuelan-based firm, Smartmatic.

The continuing control of the IP was discovered by The BRAD BLOG long after the (largely) Rightwing outrage which had forced a federal investigation into Smartmatic’s control over American elections had died down. The initial concern had coming following revelations that Smartmatic seemed to be directly tied to the Venezuelan President Chavez. Angry sentiment led by CNN’s Lou Dobbs and some members of Congress (including NY’s Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney) led to an investigation by the federal Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), subsequently forcing Smartmatic to divest of Sequoia. Sequoia was then supposedly purchased away from Smartmatic by a team of its U.S. executives, in order to make it fully independent from the Chavez-tied parent company.

But that divestiture was a lie.

Sequoia hadn’t publicly disclosed that Smartmatic still retained legal ownership of the IP used in all of their voting machines, a fact that wasn’t publicly revealed until our exposé which forced a subsequent admission by Sequoia’s then CEO and President Jack Blaine. Blaine admitted — in what he thought was a “confidential” company-wide conference call convened to explain the attempted Hart takeover to employees after they’d read the news on The BRAD BLOG — that the company hadn’t actually acquired the the IP from Smartmatic in their deal.

We subsequently detailed how Blaine had utterly dissembled on that point, in writing, while under very specific questioning about it from one of Sequoia’s largest clients, the City of Chicago and Cook County, Illinois.

So who now owns the IP for Sequoia’s voting machines used in some 20% of the U.S.? If you believe Dominion’s press release, which states “Dominion has acquired Sequoia’s inventory and all intellectual property“, that would be Dominion.

But that is simply not true.

Dominion’s Riggall admitted directly in a follow-up reply email to The BRAD BLOG, after we’d sent a direct query on this point [emphasis his]: “Smartmatic IP was not included in the Sequoia transaction, since Sequoia did not own it.”

Despite Dominion’s asserted belief in “transparency” (the front page of their website boasts “Welcome Transparency”, and their announcement of the purchase of Diebold/Premier cites “Dominion’s culture of transparency”), Riggall was unable to share the company’s two purchase agreements with us due to “non-disclosure provisions in both” of them. “Legally,” he wrote, “neither can be shared.”

Nonetheless, the answer is clear: Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez is still tied to a huge percentage of U.S. Elections, as now overseen by a Canadian firm.

When we asked Riggall for the company’s explanation for their misleading press release announcing that the Sequoia transaction included “all intellectual property” when it actually didn’t, he offered this Hoytian response:

The Smartmatic IP is Smartmatic IP. Sequoia did not own it, and thus it was not part of the transaction. Dominion purchased all of the IP that Sequoia owned. That’s what was reflected in the news release.

>>11551213

(contd)

According to the Dominion press release, if the rest of it can be believed, the Sequoia purchase was “reviewed by the U. S. Department of Justice and nine state attorneys general,” and “also reviewed in detail and received approval by the Committee of Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).”

Unfortunately, federal CFIUS investigations are held entirely in secret, so we are unable to find out from them whether the federal body was informed of Smartmatic’s continuing ownership of the Intellectual Property, and all the legal rights and privileges that go with it, as employed to conduct some 20% of U.S. elections.

Were the DoJ or any of those “nine state attorneys general” made aware of Smartmatic’s continuing ownership of the IP? Do any of the “26 million U. S. voters, including the City of Chicago and Cook County, Illinois, the State of Louisiana, the State of Nevada and the majority of counties in California,” who use Sequoia’s systems, according to the Dominion announcement, know about it? Do they even care? How about the folks on the Right who were so outraged before?

Deafening silence continues on all fronts.

Two inquiries to Riggal, on whether CFIUS, DoJ or the nine state attorneys general were informed of Smartmatic’s continuing ownership of Dominion/Sequoia’s IP were sent. Neither was answered. The last query was sent on June 12th (we had to hold publication of this story as South Carolina U.S. Senate Primary E-Vote Mystery broke two weeks ago), and neither Riggall nor anyone else from Dominion has bothered to answer the simple question.

The Revolving ‘Election Industry’ Door

One last point worth noting, for now, on all of this. The appalling revolving door of U.S. electoral control and administration continues to spin, along with the compromise of federal and localized oversight.

Think the oil industry’s corruption of federal regulatory commissions was bad in light of the BP disaster? “Big Oil” has nothing on “Big Elections” — but because the U.S. media hasn’t bothered to cover the gusher of corruption spewing into the American election system, neither has the U.S. public.

When we had questions about Dominion’s acquisition of Sequoia, we called the contact phone number given “for information”, as offered on their press releases.

Happy to find we wouldn’t be charged for an international call to Canada, we wondered why the number had a 404 area code in Atlanta, GA. When we called it, we found out as we reached Riggall’s answering machine. With the exception of the very important point about whether Dominion had informed CFIUS, the U.S. DoJ and the nine state attorneys general about the true IP ownership of their voting systems, Riggall was very helpful and quick to respond.

However, as mentioned, Riggall had formerly served as press rep for Diebold and, prior to that, as the Press Secretary to GA’s Democratic Sec. of State Cathy Cox until she left the post. In 2002, long before she left office following an unsuccessful primary bid for her party’s Gubernatorial nomination in 2006, Cox infamously brought Diebold’s horrendous touch-screen voting system to the entire state of Georgia. The Peach State, along with Maryland, was the first to adopt state-wide use of Diebold’s infamous, oft-failed, easily-manipulated, 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting systems. Chicanery with the systems has been the subject of much controversy — fueled in part by a company whistleblower, as detailed by Bobby Kennedy Jr. at Rolling Stone in 2006 — in regard to the declared upset victory of Republican Saxby Chambliss over then incumbent Democratic Sen. Max Cleland.

Cox also took the opportunity, along with her state’s acquisition of Diebold systems, to grace the cover of Diebold’s sales brochure, as seen below, to help the company sell more easily-hacked, often-failed, always-unverifiable e-voting systems to an unsuspecting, uninformed nation…

Surprisingly, Cox does not now work for a voting machine company now (she is President of Young Harris College in Georgia), as so many other election officials do so immediately upon leaving office — the most recent being PA’s Sec. of State Pedro Cortes who suddenly resigned a few weeks ago to become Executive Vice President at the ironically-named Internet voting company Everyone Counts. That company already boasts the name of Chief Operating Officer Paul DeGregorio, who took the job upon leaving his post as George W. Bush’s Chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC). As The BRAD BLOG reported in 2009, DeGregorio immediately used his former position as “America’s Chief election official” in a cheesy video sales pitch for the firm, to help push their insecure and un-overseeable Internet Voting scheme to a still-unsuspecting, and still dreadfully under-informed American public.

>>11551228

(contd) last

Meanwhile, last year Dominion had already hired away Sequoia’s VP Edwin Smith. Readers of The BRAD BLOG may remember the woeful Smith as the one who’d first sent threat letters to Princeton computer scientists, promising legal action if they independently reviewed Sequoia’s voting machines after the systems had been found to have miscounted in a New Jersey election. He then upped the public blunder by hiring his own buddy and long-time Sequoia contractor/bag-man to carry out an “independent, third party” review instead.

Smith’s “independent” hire, in addition to being anything but independent, was subsequently revealed by The BRAD BLOG to have had a, um, somewhat unsavory (if very amusing) background. After we revealed all of the chicanery, the hire was fired and Smith was disciplined by the company. But apparently he’s still welcome at Dominion, now one of the largest e-voting firms in the U.S. (and maybe even in Venezuela!)

And even more shamefully, last December Smith was even be welcomed onto the U.S. Election Assistance Commission! As we reported late last year, Smith, now “VP of Compliance and Certification” for Dominion, was disgracefully appointed to the EAC’s “Technical Guidelines Development Committee” as one of their new “Technical and Scientific Experts”. As we wrote at the time: “This would be the equivalent of appointing the sitting Vice President of Exxon Mobil to an EPA advisory committee.”

What could possibly go wrong?

As we explained: “So Smith went from voting machine company Hart Intercivic to voting machine company Sequoia Voting Systems and is now at voting machine company Dominion Voting Systems, where he is a VP, selling e-voting systems to jurisdictions around the country that receive federal money doled out by the EAC. And now he’ll also sit on an advisory board at the EAC helping to advise which one of those companies sees their systems certified for use in U.S. elections by the EAC. Just amazing.”

Now, of course, Smith’s power is even more concentrated as his new firm Dominion has acquired his old firm, Sequoia.

Around and around they all go. Where it stops, the voters never need know..

Appendix I – Election Night Gatekeepers

Appendix I

Election Night Gatekeepers (rev 12-03-2017)

https://www.watchthevoteusa.com/appendix-i-election-night-gatekeepers/

On the night of the 2016 Presidential Election, most Americans had no idea that twelve mega-entities were cooperating in the role of Election Night Gatekeepers for the Presidential Election, and potentially all other elections with the exception of a few local elections in New Hampshire, and perhaps a few other small areas of the country. (WTV has never been able to verify for certain that anywhere outside of five counties in New Hampshire since 1988 were hand-counting paper ballots properly, meaning hand-counting paper ballots BEFORE the ballots left the public sight.)

More precisely, ten of these twelve mega-entities actually cooperate on election night. These ten mega-entities are: six media giants (1) ABC, (2) CBS, (3) NBC, (4) CNN, (5) FOX, (6) AP wire: (7) NEP (owned by the just named six media giants); and three mega-election-Vendors: (8) Election Systems & Software (ES&S), (9) Hart InterCivic, and (10) Dominion (which bought Diebold circa 2013). Two of the twelve mega-entities: (11) the RNC (Republican National Committee) and the (12) DNC (Democratic National Committee), have green-lighted the hiring of the three mega-election-vendors by the Secretary of State in all 50 states, and 3000+ of our 3141 counties.

– The 2 leading committees of the two major political parties, namely the:

(11) RNC (Republican National Committee) and the (12) DNC (Democratic National Committee), which have green-lighted and fully approved their Secretaries of State in all 50 states, and their county Board of Election officials circa 3000 of our 3141 counties, hiring one of these three mega election-vendor companies (ES&S, Hart Intercivic, Dominion). Then, in a complete abdication of their election night responsibilities, the election officials have allowed whichever one of these three mega-election Vendors they have hired, to process our votes on their secret computer programs. Furthermore, the RNC and DNC have green-lighted all these Republican & Democratic election officials to sign contracts with these three election-vendors, and the other minor computer-election vendors, which state that said election officials will not examine the source code of the programs which tell the election computers what to do on election night, and will not sue these election vendors no matter what happens on election night.

>>11551511

(contd)

Here is what happens on election day and election night:

1. The exit polls reported to the public by the 5 Big TV Networks are officially sanctioned and/or commissioned by NEP (National Election Pool), owned by the 5 Big TV Networks and AP wire. These arguably un-scientific exit polls are then, real or falsified, given to the 5 TV Networks at the exact same time by NEP. The exit polls are then reported to the public in a pretend competition-charade by the 5 Big TV networks who all hold forth that they are rushing to predict the winners and losers “first”.

To examine the unscientific nature of these NEP conducted exit polls, see the 1992 book, “Votescam

: The Stealing of America ” by James & Kenneth Collier, and the article “A House without Doors” by Jim Condit Jr. appearing in the November 1996 issue of “Chronicles Magazine”, and now also online.

VNS (Voter News Service, the predecessor of today’s NEP) admitted in the national media in the 1992 New Hampshire Republican Presidential Primary, and NEP admitted in the 2016 Democratic Primaries – that their exit polls were wrong because the Pat Buchanan supporters in 1992 and the Bernie Sanders supporters in 2016 were more willing to talk to the exit poll takers than those supporting President Bush in 1992 and Hillary Clinton in 2016. In 1992 the exit polls for the New Hampshire Primary showed that Buchanan would beat then President Bush, and in 2016 the exit polls often showed that Sanders would defeat Hillary Clinton, – but the published computerized vote count showed the opposite.

In 1996 at the New Hampshire primary, the VNS exit poll lady told our team what we observed: VNS started their exit polling at 9 AM, roughly two hours after the polls opened, missing the morning rush hours, and that the results were called into VNS beginning at 5 PM, roughly two hours before the polls close, thus missing the evening rush hours. And, furthermore, the exit poll lady admitted that only about 1 out of 15 voters were willing to be exit polled (people are private, or have to rush to work, or have to pick up the kids at school, or take Grandma to the doctor, etc.). So where is the scientific basis for such exit polls? This is only the tip of the iceberg. What the Big TV Networks did with their entrance poll in the 1996 Iowa Presidential Caucus is even more shocking and obviously fraudulent, as revealed in the above referenced article, “A House without Doors”, and the 1996 radio talk shows interviewing Watch The Vote’s Jim Condit Jr.

>>11551533

(contd)

The late Jim Collier used to point out the implausibly of exit polls from around the country, in view of the state of technology in the 1970s and 1980s, being called in to Voter News Service and collated, and analyzed in time for the TV Networks to often make incredibly precise projections, even in close races, as the polls were closing and long before any votes were even counted and reported. In “Votescam: the Stealing of America” the Colliers relate Ken Collier’s 1970 race against incumbent congressman Claude “Red” Pepper, in which the news media ultimately appealed to ONE voting machine in Dade County, Florida, never specified, to make a projection for incumbent Pepper as the winner right as the polls closed. It’s hilarious, but a harbinger of what was about to descend on the USA and its people.

1. To take a step back, these same networks issue alleged public opinion polls months leading up to a Presidential elections, and other elections of nationwide significance. In most cases, the public opinion polls prepare the public for the exit polls conducted on election day, which almost always prepare the public for the computer results to be published later on election night.

(This pattern, described immediately above, was disrupted on election night 2016 in the Presidential contest, for probable reasons mostly beyond the scope of this paper. But suffice it to say that, in light of the huge crowds at Trump rallies, usually 5,000 to 25,000 people for 14 months straight all over the nation, compared to non-existent crowds of 100 to 400 at Hillary Clinton rallies, including local Democrats virtually forced to attend, — and in light of the 1000 to 1 ratio of Trump signs to Hillary signs in the rural areas, and the 100 to 1 ratio of Trump signs to Hillary signs in the cities, — the Big Network Public Opinion Polls published for months leading up to the election, showing Hillary Clinton far ahead, seem to have been deliberately falsified to shape public opinion, rather than to reflect it. In fact, numerous commentators, not given publicity by the 5 TV Networks or related national media, have stated the opinion that rather than losing the popular vote by 3 million votes, that Trump actually won by up to 10 million votes, – that the computer results, according to these opinions, were warped by computer fraud perpetrated by election hackers, or even the big election vendors themselves. The scary part, the part that should concern every American, is that no one can prove what was the case, either way, since the chain of custody of the ballots was spoiled in 49 states and one half of New Hampshire. That is the whole point of this Watch the Vote report to the Presidential election commission.)

1. On election day, and now leading up to election day in early voting, the people vote using the systems presented to them by their local county Board of Elections.

1. 96%+ of the votes of the American people are then processed on the secret, easily-rigged computer programs of three mega-vendors of computerized election systems without any oversight by election officials over this process, or any effective checks and balances on election day or night.

1. When the three mega-election vendors approve the results in each county, they are then released to the county election officials via the local computers, and, the election officials, in turn, take these results on blind faith, and report these alleged results to the local news media.

6 NEP gets these results from either the local counties, or from the three mega-election vendors.

1. NEP then reports the results, county by county, state by state, directly or indirectly, to their six owners, the five TV Networks and AP wire.

1. The 5 TV Networks announce the results to the nation, and AP wire sends the results of the state and national elections, especially the Presidential election, to all of the establishment print media, both national and local publications.

1. If there are any recounts, which are rare, then the ballots are brought out about two or three weeks later, as a rule, after having been out of the public sight for these weeks. How the ballots are prepared before the public is allowed to see them again may vary, but the public has no idea if the ballots brought out for the recount are the same ballots marked by the voters. Needless to say, in an estimated 25% of the country where no paper ballots are used, there is no way to even theoretically double check the published computer results.

A more extensive treatment of this subject can be found at the website ElectionNightGatekeepers.com.