BYÂ
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 Venezuelaâs 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 Dominionâs voting technology, which is currently used in 28 U.S. states and Puerto Rico, according to the firmâs official website. More than 40 percent of American voters cast their ballots through the Dominion system in general elections, including 65 of Michiganâs 83 counties, all 159 counties in Georgia, and 2.2 million voters in Maricopa, Arizonaâs largest county, among others.
Origins
Smartmatic was founded by three Venezuelan engineers in 1997âAntonio 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 Venezuelaâs regime for a 2004 referendum that socialist leader Hugo ChĂĄvez 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 Chåvez 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 Venezuelaâs government manipulated the results of the countryâs 2017 Constitutional Assembly election. Smartmatic said the turnout figures were overstated by at least 1 million votes, Reuters reported.
âWe know, without any doubt, that the turnout of the recent election for a National Constituent Assembly was manipulated,â Smartmatic CEO Antonio Mugica said at a news briefing in London in 2017. âWe estimate the difference between the actual participation and the one announced by authorities is at least 1 million votes.â
ChĂĄvezâs successor, NicolĂĄs Maduro, who is allied with the Chinese Communist Party and Russia, was indicted by the Trump administration in March on charges of ânarco-terrorism.â Cubaâs Fidel Castro also mourned the death of ChĂĄvez, who called him a âfather, a comrade,â according to a 2005 interview with Cuban Communist Party newspaper Granma.
âManipulatedâ Results
In Venezuela, Ana Mercedes DĂaz was appointed deputy director general of the countryâs National Electoral Council in 1991. Then, in 2003âjust before the referendumâshe was appointed director general of political parties of the council. (The electoral council is one of the five branches of Venezuelaâs government responsible for overseeing its elections and referendums.)
DĂaz was fired in 2004 after she published information on electoral fraud occurring in Venezuelaâs referendum. She said that whatâs happening in the United States mirrors the issues with Smartmatic in Venezuela.
âIt was admitted by Smartmatic that the results can be manipulated,â DĂaz told The Epoch Times. âSmartmatic later came out of Venezuela, but itâs been proven that this type of fraud goes wherever they go. Whatâs happening in the United States is exactly the same thing.â
âThe program can make those changes from Trump to Biden,â she said, adding that âthis change is almost impossible to detect.â
After her firing, someone who still worked for the council sent DĂaz a copy of the contract the government signed with Smartmatic. She saw that it was negotiated in only three days and thought it strange the government chose a company with no previous history or experience in elections, despite that being one of the criteria of the councilâs selection.
DĂaz later emigrated to the United States. Since Venezuelaâs 2004 referendum until his death in 2013, ChĂĄvez won all of the countryâs elections through a âfraudulent system,â she said.
DĂaz noted other parallels and similarities between issues in this yearâs election and what she saw in Venezuela. Many American poll watchers and challengers have submitted sworn affidavits saying they couldnât see the actual ballots being counted, due to obstruction. She said in Venezuela, âobservers were also not allowed to see the votes.â
âIn Venezuela, the opposition was winning, the light went off, and when it came back, the results were flipped. I was following the U.S. election and there came a moment where information stopped ⊠nobody knew what had happened,â she said.
âThere was nothing for a few hoursâitâs exactly, exactly, exactly how Smartmatic operated in Venezuela.â
According to DĂaz, Venezuela is exporting its voting machines to other Latin and Asian countries so they can influence elections across the globe. The U.S. government has repeatedly sanctioned officials of Maduroâs regime who were involved in public corruption or undermining democracy.
Smartmatic âis thought to be backing out of Venezuelan electoral events, focusing now on other parts of the world, including the United States via its subsidiary, Sequoia,â according to the leaked 2006 State Department cable.
âSmartmatic is a riddle. The company came out of nowhere to snatch a multimillion-dollar contract in an electoral process that ultimately reaffirmed Chavezâs mandate and all-but destroyed his political opposition,â the cable continues. âThe perspective we have here, after several discussions ⊠is that the company is de facto Venezuelan and operated by Venezuelans.â
A former CIA official whoâs an expert in Latin American politics and counterterrorism said his team found through an investigation that ChĂĄvez started to focus on voting machines to ensure victory as early as 2003, when more than 20 percent of Venezuelans signed a recall referendum to remove him as president.
â[ChĂĄvez] started talking to a company called Indra, a Spanish company which [ran] electionsâ in Venezuela at that time, he said.
After deciding that Indraâs voting machines werenât âflexibleâ enough, ChĂĄvez contacted Smartmatic, according to the official. Smartmatic says that Chavez didnât contact the company but that the process went through the National Election Council; Smartmatic later won the bid over Indra, and the five-member Venezuelan electoral council, dominated by ChĂĄvez supporters, awarded a $91 million contract to Smartmatic for the referendum.
âAt midnight on Election Day, the machine stopped counting,â the official said, noting that ChĂĄvez was losing at that point. âBy 3 a.m., Chavez had won by 10 percent.â
Smartmatic spokesperson Samira Saba said that results arenât available in real-time.
In 2005, Smartmatic bought Sequoia Voting Systems, a much larger and more established company based in Oakland, California. At the time, Sequoia had installed voting equipment in 17 U.S. states and Washington.
Concerns that Smartmatic had ties to Chåvez were so widespread at the time that the U.S. government began investigating the takeover of the company a year after the purchase, The New York Times reported at the time. The probe was conducted by the Committee of Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which reviews deals by foreign acquirers for potential national security risks.
Among the points for concern was Smartmaticâs convoluted business structure.
âSmartmatic has claimed to be of U.S. origin, but its true ownersâprobably elite Venezuelans of several political strainsâremain hidden behind a web of holding companies in the Netherlands and Barbados,â according to the State Department cable.
In 2006, Treasury Secretary John Snow had inquired whether the Venezuelan government could use Sequoia to manipulate U.S. elections. Then-Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), another high-profile politician who raised similar concerns, was the first to voice the need for an investigation of the Sequoia deal.
Before it sold Sequoia, Smartmatic had refused to undergo such a review by the U.S. government, claiming all the allegations were simply rumors.
âIt seems [Smartmatic] could not overcome the cloud of doubt surrounding this dealâhad they been able to, we would not be talking about a sale of Sequoia today,â Maloney said in a 2006 statement. âAs I said in May, it seems that a CFIUS review was in fact the proper course.â
Smartmatic attempted to respond to those concerns, but in 2007, ended up selling Sequoia to what the company described in a statement as âa group of private U.S. investors comprised by Sequoiaâs current executive management team, led by Sequoia President & CEO Jack Blaine and the companyâs chief financial officer, Peter McManemy.â
Such private equity firms, as well as Dominion, were named in a scathing 2019 release by Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), and Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), who had raised concerns about the poor condition and vulnerabilities of voting machines and other election equipment, along with a lack of transparency, in letters to these firms.
A year after Smartmatic sold Sequoia, the name of Sequoiaâs new owner was revealed through a 2008 lawsuit: âSVS Holdings.â Court arguments uncovered that Smartmatic was still the owner of Sequoiaâs intellectual property.
Dominion Voting Systems
Some Smartmatic employees later joined Dominion Voting Systems, which was founded in Toronto, in 2002 and also has offices in the United States and Serbia. In 2010, Eric Coomer, former Smartmatic vice president of engineering, joined Dominion.
According to a Dominion statement that has since been all but scrubbed from the internet, aside from a file saved by journalist Brad Friedman, the company announced on June 4, 2010, that it had âacquired the assets of Sequoia Voting Systems, a major U.S. provider of voting solutions serving nearly 300 jurisdictions in 16 states.â
âAs part of the transaction, Dominion has acquired Sequoiaâs inventory and all intellectual property, including software, firmware, and hardware, for Sequoiaâs precinct and central count optical scan and DRE voting solutions, including BPS, WinEDS, Edge, Edge2, Advantage, Insight, InsightPlus and 400C systems,â the release states.
âDominion will also retain Sequoiaâs facilities in Denver, Colorado, and San Leandro, California, and will consolidate Sequoiaâs Jamestown, New York, facility with Dominionâs existing Jamestown facility,â the release continues. âDominion has hired Sequoiaâs customer service and technical personnel to ensure capable, experienced, and responsive customer service for all current Sequoia jurisdictions.â
The release notes that Dominionâs acquisition of Sequoiaâs assets was reviewed by the Justice Department and nine state attorneys general. It was also reviewed and approved by CFIUS.
According to a July 2009 press release distributed by Business Wire, Sequoia and Dominion at one point also signed a temporary contract with New York state âfor the purchase of voting equipment and related services to Dominion Voting, with Dominion assuming all of Sequoiaâs obligations under the contract.â
The release states the financial details of the transaction âare not being disclosed by the parties; however both Sequoia and Dominion are pleased with the outcome of this agreement.â
In 2012, the connection between Dominion and Smartmatic was highlighted again in a lawsuit. Smartmatic filed the suit in the Delaware Court of Chancery against Dominion for the âcompanyâs alleged breach of a licensing agreement and tortious interference with Smartmaticâs business,â according to a company statement.
âThe lawsuit is seeking compensation from Dominion for allegedly withholding technology and services that had been licensed to Smartmatic, and for Dominionâs intentional actions to denigrate Smartmaticâs brand and undermine its relationship with customers and prospects,â the release states.
The case reportedly was settled out of court.
In 2009, Dominion and Smartmatic entered into a contract in which Dominion provided Smartmatic with optical scanning machines used in the 2010 Philippines election, which at the time was âthe biggest automated election run by a private company.â Glitches on Smartmatic machines also took place in the Philippines election, as detailed in one report by ABS-CBN.
âBoth companiesâ reputations suffered as a result of heavily publicized litigation relating to a software glitch that was resolved just before the 2010 election and that litigation rumbled on to partly affect the mid-term elections in 2013,â according to a report published in Accesswire.
This history suggests that Dominion and Smartmatic each owned Sequoia at different points in time, and that the intellectual property of Smartmatic remains with Sequoia. Itâs unclear whether Dominion used Sequoia software in the recent U.S. elections.
A number of Venezuelan individuals who worked for Sequoia also allegedly worked for Smartmatic and Dominion and had become contractors for each of the companies.
âThey are moving around in there,â an intelligence source knowledgeable on Venezuela and its alleged criminal activities told The Epoch Times.
âSmartmatic machines allowed them to mirror the system, they can see live how much they were losing by,â the source asserted. âThey tell you you would need to produce 30,000 votes and it has the ability to switch votes. Then, you balance it on your own.â
There have also been numerous issues with Sequoiaâs voting software reported by a number of news outlets over the years. One of the problems took place in October 2006, when Sequoia, then a Denver voting machine contractor, had to send letters to 44,000 voters warning of a mistake on absentee ballots after they found the âyesâ and ânoâ boxes on a ballot question were transposed.
Staple Street Capital, a private equity firm located in New York, purchased Dominion in 2018, according to a press release.
The securities firm that arranged the transaction, UBS Securities LLC, is a division of UBS Americas Inc., which ultimately falls under UBS Group AG, a company listed on the SIX Swiss stock exchange.
Three out of four board members of UBS Securities LLC are Chinese, at least one of whom appears to reside in Hong Kong, according to Bloomberg. UBS says it was one of the âfirst international banks to have a local presenceâ in China in the 1990s. In 2012, it formed the current company, UBS Securities Co. Ltd., which it says is the âfirst foreign-invested fully-licensed securities firm in China.â
Officials with Dominion didnât immediately respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment. On its website, Dominion has information under a specific subhead refuting any connection between Dominion, Smartmatic, and Sequoia.
âDominion and Smartmatic are two separate companies that make electronic voting systems. Dominion does not use or license Smartmatic software. Smartmatic has also refuted such claims. Dominion did NOT acquire Smartmatic and/or its software from Sequoia,â the website states.
John R. Mills, former director of cybersecurity policy, strategy, and international affairs at the Office of the Secretary of Defense told The Epoch Times:Â âThere is this interesting intersection with legacy software or firmware developers in Venezuela and the current slate of voting machines including Dominion.
âVenezuela has a solid footprint of Chinese, Russian, and Iranian activities for influence operations in the Americas. For these to not have an intersection would be odd.â
Smartmatic spokesperson Saba told The Epoch Times that the company has ânothing to addâ aside from the statements published on its website, âbecause those statements are the facts.â
Its website refutes any connections with Dominion or Sequoia. One bullet point the spokesperson lists in an email is that the companyâs role in the 2020 U.S. election was âlimited to the county of Los Angeles.â
Saba said in an email to another reporter: âThere are no ties between Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmaticâplain and simple. No ownership ties, no software leasing, no business at all between them. In 2009, Smartmatic licensed scanning machines from Dominion for use in The Philippines for a Smartmatic election project.
âThat short-lived contract was the first and last time that Smartmatic and Dominion tried to do business together. ⊠Smartmatic sold election technology and services in Venezuela from 2004 until 2017.â
The Epoch Times visited Dominion offices in Denver and Toronto, which both appeared to be abandoned; the news outlet was denied entry to Smartmaticâs office in Florida.