By NICHOLAS RICCARDI
DENVER (AP) — Voting tools firm Dominion Voting Programs, a goal of false conspiracy theories from President Donald Trump and his supporters for the reason that 2020 election, has been purchased by a agency run by a former Republican elections official, the brand new firm introduced Thursday.
The newly shaped firm, Liberty Vote, additionally vowed to comply with the govt order Trump signed final spring searching for sweeping modifications to election insurance policies that a number of judges have placed on maintain for violating the Structure.
KNOWiNK, a St. Louis-based supplier of digital ballot books that enable election officers to substantiate voter info, introduced the deal and the identify change. In a doable nod to a groundless conspiracy concept that linked Dominion to the late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, the discharge highlighted that the corporate would grow to be “100% American-owned.”
The announcement additionally quotes KNOWiNK’s proprietor, former St. Louis elections director Scott Leiendecker, as vowing to supply “election expertise that prioritizes paper-based transparency,” one of many longtime calls for of election conspiracy theorists. Virtually all U.S. voting tools already leaves a paper path.
Dominion’s former CEO confirmed the sale in a single-sentence assertion on Thursday: “Liberty Vote has acquired Dominion Voting Programs,” John Poulos stated.
The discharge from the brand new firm vows to reintroduce “hand-marked paper ballots” and alter firm insurance policies to comply with Trump’s govt order on voting procedures, which isn’t in impact as a result of judges have dominated that Trump doesn’t have the facility to mandate them. A part of the president’s order sought to ban voting tools that produces a paper document with “a barcode or quick-response code” — tools that’s at present in use in a whole lot of counties throughout 19 states.
Denver-based Dominion was on the coronary heart of among the most fevered conspiracy theories about Trump’s loss to Democrat Joe Biden within the 2020 election. These false allegations sparked quite a few defamation lawsuits towards conservative-leaning media and the president’s allies, together with a settlement in 2023 wherein Fox Information agreed to pay Dominion $787 million and one this yr that Newsmax settled for $67 million.
The announcement from the brand new firm doesn’t disclose the price of the transaction, however a spokesman stated all the cash was put up by Leiendecker. Each corporations concerned are privately held.
The false allegations towards Dominion made its model poisonous in lots of Republican-leaning states and counties. However voting machine corporations are normally cautious about making overt political statements, on condition that the marketplace for their tools is break up between locations beneath Republican and Democratic management.
The statements by Liberty Vote saying it should align with Trump’s govt order, which has been challenged by Democratic state attorneys basic, the Democratic Nationwide Committee and an array of voting and civil rights teams, might result in issues in blue states that at present use Dominion tools.
However some election officers stated Thursday that KNOWiNK had appeared to keep away from 2020 conspiracy theories and acted like a typical, nonpartisan agency.
“They’ve a very good popularity within the subject,” Stephen Richer, a Republican who was focused by Trump and his allies when he served as the highest elections official in Arizona’s Maricopa County, which incorporates Phoenix.
Regardless of years of detailed debunking of the Dominion conspiracy theories, Trump has continued to repeat them at the same time as not too long ago as just a few weeks in the past, when he vowed to eliminate voting machines. The president doesn’t have the facility to try this as a result of the Structure offers states and Congress the authority to set election and voting guidelines.
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