Voting technology company Dominion Voting Systems (DVS), founded in Toronto and a target of conspiracy theories in the 2020 U.S. presidential election spread by Republican Donald Trump and his allies, has been sold.
Dominion, which operated out of Denver for the past several years, was bought by a firm run by a former Republican elections official, its new company announced Thursday.
The acquisition represents a remarkable turn of events from just over two years ago. In April 2023, as a defamation trial neared, Fox Corporation and Fox News agreed to pay $787.5 million US in a settlement and said it did “acknowledge the court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false” in post-election coverage across its news properties.
Heading into 2025, Dominion still had outstanding litigation for similar cause against a handful of individuals and entities, but according to a report Thursday in Axios, it reached undisclosed settlements with former Trump lawyers Sidney Powell and Rudolph Giuliani and One America News Network. Dominion had declined to comment in late September to CNN when it was learned through a court filing that the Giuliani lawsuit had been settled.
Fox Corporation and Fox News reached a last-minute $787.5-million US settlement in a defamation lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems. Andrew Chang explores why Fox chose to settle, and what it could mean for the future of news.
New company ‘dedicated to restoring trust’
KnowInk, a St. Louis-based provider of electronic poll books that allow election officials to confirm voter information, announced the deal and the name change of the company to Liberty Vote.
The announcement also quotes KnowInk’s owner, former St. Louis elections director Scott Leiendecker, as vowing to provide “election technology that prioritizes paper-based transparency,” one of the longtime demands of election conspiracy theorists.
Almost all voting equipment in the U.S., including that supplied by Dominion, already leaves a paper trail.
Canadian John Poulos, Dominion’s former CEO, confirmed the sale in a single-sentence statement on Thursday: “Liberty Vote has acquired Dominion Voting Systems.”
While Poulos still had a stake in the company he helped found, the private equity firm Staple Street Capital had, in 2018, acquired a large controlling stake in a $38 million US deal.
All internet traffic to the former Dominion site, including fact checks about its technology and the 2020 vote, now redirects to libertyvote.com. In a signed statement on the site from Leiendecker, referred to as its founder and chairman, the company says it is “100 per cent American-owned” and is “dedicated to restoring trust in our elections.”
The announcement from the new company does not disclose the cost of the transaction, but a spokesperson told The Associated Press all the money was put up by Leiendecker. KnowInk and Liberty Vote are privately held.
Machines used in provincial, municipal elections
Poulos, a University of Toronto electrical engineering graduate, started the company with partner James Hoover three years after the nailbiter 2000 U.S. presidential election — when paper ballot results led to “hanging chads” and disputes in the critical swing state of Florida.
A U.S. Supreme Court decision ultimately led to a conclusion, and a Republican victory, but there were also controversies, albeit smaller in scope, with Diebold voting machines in the 2004 presidential election.
The information about how Dominion machines worked was widely available by the time of the 2020 election, as Poulos had given testimony to government committees across North America. While not used at the federal level by Elections Canada, Dominion has been utilized in a number of provincial and municipal elections.
Many Trump supporters and Republican officials were stunned when Joe Biden amassed 81 million votes to win the 2020 election, and they were particularly incensed about the counting of ballots past the Nov. 3 election date. Trump prematurely declared himself the winner on election night and amassed more votes as they were counted in the first hours and days, but the Biden total surpassed his in a vote held as the COVID-19 pandemic raged and vaccines were not yet available.
But recounts, reviews and audits in the battleground states where he disputed his loss all affirmed Biden’s victory. Judges, including some Trump appointed, rejected dozens of his legal challenges.
Allegations spread about Dominion and Smartmatic, another voting technology company. Powell propagated an outlandish theory that Dominion’s origins were in Venezuela, with connections to the late autocrat Hugo Chavez.
One subsequent study concluded that postelection audits “shifted the net presidential vote count by only about 0.007 per cent.”
Former election official targeted
Chris Krebs, a Trump appointee who headed the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), characterized the election in November 2020 as “the most secure in American history.” He was fired weeks later, and this past April it was revealed that Trump had signed a memoranda directing the Justice Department to investigate Krebs, on unspecified grounds.
William Barr, attorney general at the time of the election and up to that point a staunch defender of Trump, told The Associated Press in December 2020 that there was no evidence of widespread fraud that would have changed the election result. Barr later told a congressional committee that the claims were “bullshit.”
Nevertheless, a large number of Trump supporters descended on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to prevent the certification of Biden’s victory.
At the time of the 2020 vote, counties in over 20 states in the decentralized American election administration system used Dominion machines.
Trump, in his second, non-consecutive term as president, continues to insist the vote five years ago was “rigged.” Trump’s victories in the 2016 and the 2024 election also occurred with Dominion technology being employed across several jurisdictions.
There has never been a coherent explanation as to how the vote total for the presidential race alone was corrupted while congressional, gubernatorial and myriad other races on 2020 ballots were unaffected or contested without incident.
Poulos in 2023 told 60 Minutes that the allegations subjected the company’s employees to email and phone threats and harassment. One of its former employees prevailed in a civil trial in July, with a federal jury finding that staunch Trump ally Mike Lindell, the founder of the MyPillow company, defamed him.
Smartmatic also filed defamation lawsuits against a number of Republican individuals and entities stemming from the 2020 election.
The release from Liberty Vote vows to reintroduce “hand-marked paper ballots” and adjust company policies to follow a recent Trump executive order on voting procedures
Part of the president’s order sought to prohibit voting equipment that produces a paper record with “a barcode or quick-response code” — equipment that is currently in use in hundreds of counties across 19 states, according to an Associated Press report.
Trump’s executive order has been challenged by Democratic state attorneys general, the Democratic National Committee and several civil rights and voting organizations.
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