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Troubling Foreign Ties Behind Voting Machines Used in US
December 8, 2020
Behind a significant portion of voting machines used in the United States lies a complex web of questionable foreign ties, a hidden ownership structure, and transparency concerns with the software itself, as well as a connection between three key voting systems companies: Smartmatic, Sequoia Voting Systems, and Dominion Voting Systems.
Information from lawsuits, public records, and witness interviews helps to untangle this web.
The Epoch Times spoke with an intelligence source knowledgeable on Venezuela and its criminal activities, a former CIA official who is an expert in Latin American politics and counterterrorism, and a former director of Venezuela’s National Electoral Council who was fired for exposing election fraud in the country. Two of the sources requested anonymity so they could speak freely on the matter.
At the center of all of this is Dominion’s voting technology, which is currently used in 28 U.S. states and Puerto Rico, according to the firm’s official website. More than 40 percent of American voters cast their ballots through the Dominion system in general elections, including 65 of Michigan’s 83 counties, all 159 counties in Georgia, and 2.2 million voters in Maricopa, Arizona’s largest county, among others.
Meanwhile, Smartmatic has in recent years focused on project management and consulting for elections, rather than providing software or machines.
Origins
Smartmatic was founded by three Venezuelan engineers in 1997—Antonio Mucica, Alfredo Jose, and Roger Piñate. It was in the business of electronic voting systems, identity management, and systems for civil registration and authentication products.
Although a little-known company at the time, Smartmatic was chosen by Venezuela’s regime for a 2004 referendum that socialist leader Hugo Chávez would win. Prior to that, Smartmatic was part of a consortium that included a software company partly owned by a Venezuelan government agency. At the time, there was a wide array of allegations of fraud in the referendum by media organizations and observers.
Smartmatic was officially incorporated in Delaware in April 2000 and headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida. In April 2003, the company unveiled a prototype election automation machine. It was developed in-house and included the integration of hardware and software from design to deployment. The company moved its main headquarters to Amsterdam in 2004 and then London in 2012.
Smartmatic allegedly has 30 anonymous investors and silent partners who are mainly upper-class Venezuelans, including defense minister Jose Vicente Rangel and Chávez mentor Luis Miquelina, and others, according to a July 20, 2006, State Department diplomatic cable that was leaked to Wikileaks.
The company publicly acknowledged that Venezuela’s government manipulated the results of the country’s 2017 Constitutional Assembly election. Smartmatic said the turnout figures were overstated by at least 1 million votes, Reuters reported.
“We know, without any doubt, that the turnout of the recent election for a National Constituent Assembly was manipulated,” Smartmatic CEO Antonio Mugica said at a news briefing in London in 2017. “We estimate the difference between the actual participation and the one announced by authorities is at least 1 million votes.”
Chávez’s successor, Nicolás Maduro, who is allied with the Chinese Communist Party and Russia, was indicted by the Trump administration in March on charges of “narco-terrorism.” Cuba’s Fidel Castro also mourned the death of Chávez, who called him a “father, a comrade,” according to a 2005 interview with Cuban Communist Party newspaper Granma…
https://www.theepochtimes.com/foreign-ties-behind-dominion-smartmatic-voting-machines-including-to-an-adversary_3602603.html?utm_source=news&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2020-12-08-5