Dem
47
GOP
53
Dominion Voting Systems is no more. Its voting equipment was used by about one-third of all voters in 27 states. Fox maligned the company, which then sued Fox for defamation. Before it got to trial, Fox gave up and paid Dominion $787 million in damages.
Under the radar, a former Republican election official from Missouri, Scott Leiendecker, has bought Dominion in a privately financed deal. He hasn't disclosed what he paid for it, but if he paid less than $787 million for a company that has $787 million in the bank, he got a really good deal. He also didn't disclose why he bought it and what he plans to do with it. He did absorb it into his company, Liberty Vote, though. He presumably knows that "Liberty" is a popular word among Republicans. Dominion's founder and CEO, John Poulos, confirmed the sale with a seven-word statement: "Liberty Vote has acquired Dominion Voting Systems." That was it.
Leiendecker did make an announcement that seemed to embrace some of Donald Trump's ideas about transforming voting procedures, one of which is using paper ballots. He has also talked about "election integrity," which is a very loose term that Republicans love to bandy about. Leiendecker has specifically said that Liberty Vote will be in compliance with Trump's XO on voting, even though District Judge Denise Casper has already blocked part of the XO as unconstitutional, specifically the part requiring proof of citizenship to vote. Noncitizens are already banned from voting, but elections are run by the states and the president has no authority to tell the states how they may run elections. Signing an XO ordering states to do something you have no authority to order them to do is unconstitutional. Congress has some authority, but it must exercise that authority in compliance with the Constitution and by passing laws. Trump also wants to ban early voting and mail-in voting.
Not everyone is happy with Dominion's new owner. Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) claimed (without evidence) that Leiendecker bought Dominion to help Trump "cheat, potentially with voting machines" in the midterms. She urged states to drop the machines. She wasn't alone. Matt Crane, director of the Colorado Clerks Association, said: "The clerks were very upset about this."
It would have been much better if the whole thing weren't done under the table. If Poulos wanted to cash out, fine. He could have had an IPO and have Dominion become a publicly traded company with many stockholders, with all the transparency and auditing that requires. He didn't. And selling it to a former Republican official with probably something in the ballpark of $1 billion from unknown sources does not engender optimism that the unknown sources of money are merely interested in making a profit and nothing more. At this point, it might be best for states to stop using the machines and do what Trump wants: count all the (paper) ballots by hand. (V)