One Republican Now Controls a Enormous Chunk of US Election Infrastructure

The information final week that Dominion Voting Methods was bought by the founder and CEO of Knowink, a Missouri-based maker of digital ballot books, has left election integrity activists confused over what, if something, this might imply for voters and the integrity of US elections.

The corporate, acquired by Scott Leiendecker, a former Republican Get together operative and election director in Missouri earlier than founding Knowink, stated in a press launch that he was rebranding Dominion, which has headquarters in Canada and the US, underneath the title Liberty Vote “in a daring and historic transfer to remodel and enhance election integrity in America” and to distance the corporate from false allegations made beforehand by President Donald Trump and his supporters that the corporate had rigged the 2020 presidential election to offer the win to President Joe Biden.

The Liberty launch stated that the rebranded firm will likely be one hundred pc American-owned, that it’s going to have a “paper poll focus” that leverages hand-marked paper ballots, will “prioritize facilitating third-party auditing,” and is “dedicated to home staffing and software program growth.” The press launch supplied no particulars, nevertheless, to clarify what this implies in observe.

Dominion, the second main supplier of voting machines within the US, whose programs are utilized in 27 states—together with your entire state of Georgia—has developed its software program in Canada and Belgrade, Serbia, for twenty years. A search on LinkedIn reveals quite a few programmers and different employees in Serbia who declare to be employed by the corporate.

The Liberty assertion doesn’t say whether or not the corporate plans to rewrite code developed by these overseas employees—which might probably contain rewriting lots of of 1000’s of traces of code—or whether or not the corporate will transfer overseas builders to the US or change them with American programmers. (Dominion has a US headquarters in Colorado.) A Liberty official, who agreed to talk on the situation that they not be named, advised WIRED solely that Leiendecker “is dedicated to one hundred pc … home staffing and software program growth.” An unnamed supply advised CNN, nevertheless, that Liberty will proceed to have a presence in Canada, the place its machines are used throughout the nation.

Philip Stark, professor of statistics at UC Berkeley and a longtime election-integrity advocate, says Liberty’s assurance about domestic-only employees is a crimson herring. “If the declare is that that is someway a safety measure, it isn’t. As a result of programmers primarily based within the US additionally … could also be serious about undermining or altering election integrity,” he tells WIRED.

With regard to third-party audits talked about within the press launch, a Liberty official advised WIRED this implies the corporate will conduct a “third-party, top-to-bottom, unbiased overview of [Dominion] software program and tools in a well timed method and can work intently with federal and state certification businesses and report any vulnerabilities” to offer voters assurance within the machines and the outcomes they produce. The corporate didn’t say when this overview would happen, however a Liberty consultant advised Axios it will occur forward of subsequent yr’s midterm elections, and the corporate would “rebuild or retire” machines as wanted.