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Anonymous ID: e51985 Nov. 12, 2020, 2:33 a.m. No.11606667   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>6697 >>6720 >>6890 >>7026 >>7146 >>7223 >>7334

John Poulos is the founding President and CEO of Dominion Voting, a company focused on improving the electoral process through the application of technology.

 

Dominion is now in about 150 municipalities and was used in a couple of province-wide elections, including most polling stations in Ontario’s 2010 election. Dominion also has technology in 1,000 United States counties across 35 states.

 

Poulos has grown the company through direct support to elections in Mongolia and the Philippines.

 

His company now offers a full suite of technology-enabled equipment and services for all aspects of election, from compiling lists of eligible voters and recording when they voted, to counting votes and polling stations, to remote voting technologies that take the booth to the voter.

 

Identifying that automated voting technology could enable disenfranchised voters a transparent say in their own destiny, he co-founded the Delian Project, a non-profit organization that aims to help post-conflict and emerging democracies implement positive change in their electoral process through the application of technology.

 

He was selected as one of Canada’s Top 40 under 40 in 2010. His company has also been named to Deloitte Canada’s Fast 50 Technology Companies for four consecutive years. He was awarded the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Award in 2013 for his philanthropic work, and was recognized as Greek America’s 40 under 40.

 

John Poulos holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Toronto, and a Master’s of Business Administration from INSEAD.

 

He is a youth hockey coach and a mentor to young aspiring business students. He is an active member of YPO, and part of an alliance of Greek-Canadian entrepreneurs who share a common goal to preserve their heritage.

Anonymous ID: e51985 Nov. 12, 2020, 4:04 a.m. No.11607191   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>7194 >>7223 >>7334

It's a cliché on the Left that democracy is big business, that this particularly complicated political system is ripe with opportunities for boundless profiteering.

 

For John Poulos, whose firm sells equipment that helps governments run technologically advanced elections, it's not quite that simple – the link between a cast vote and a quick buck not quite that seamless.

 

"It's a struggle," he says.

 

Customers are budget-conscious and hesitant to change, Poulos explains, often using technology bought 50 or more years ago.

 

Yet, in the past five years, his Toronto-based firm has posted a remarkable growth rate of 10,356 per cent. This is a rather grand way of saying Dominion Voting Systems Corp. grew from four men and an idea to about 95 employees and a customizable product – enough to earn Dominion Voting No. 2 spot on Deloitte's 2009 list of the 50 fastest-growing Canadian tech firms.

 

It does not trade publicly and, on election days, those who cast ballots may not think twice about the machine tabulating their votes.

 

But if you recently cast a municipal vote in Oakville, Pickering or Montreal, or a provincial vote in September 's St. Paul's by-election – or were among the many in the state of New York who voted for senator Barack Obama for U.S. president – you may have used the handiwork of this relatively small Canadian company.

 

Those who remember Florida's "hanging chad" fiasco of 2000 and its stain on American democracy know just how important the technology behind elections really is. The pace of technological change among potential clients is practically glacial, but Dominion has thrived. It has few rivals but has run test trials in the U.K. and Colombia and is contributing voting technology to the Philippines' 2010 national election.

Anonymous ID: e51985 Nov. 12, 2020, 4:05 a.m. No.11607194   🗄️.is 🔗kun

>>11607191

Poulos started Dominion Voting in 2002, after the disaster in Florida. Tens of thousands of incorrectly punched ballots were discounted, leading to accusations of fraud in the tight race between George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore. "There was … quite a bit of money spent a few years ago" on electronic voting machines, touted as more reliable, says Richard Niemi, a professor at the University of Rochester who researches voting machines and ballot design.

 

In New York state, Dominion's technology is replacing 50-year-old, 363-kilogram clunkers

 

Dominion's system mixes electronics and paper, combining an analog paper trail of each person's vote with the advantages of quick, digital tallying. Its optical scanning technology is widely respected but American clients, at least post-Florida, looked on Dominion's use of paper as quaint. "That was not seen as sexy," Poulos says.

 

What happened in a Sarasota County election in 2006 swung opinion the other way: an electronic undercount effectively denied 18,000 citizens their right to vote.

 

"That's a huge travesty of democracy," says Renan Levine, a political scientist at the University of Toronto, noting purely digital voting machines can be wiped clean. "If you've got a crash in the middle of the day, what are you going to do? Call those people back to vote?"