Canadian-founded voting technology firm at centre of poll controversy

New York, Nov 19 (IANS): A Canadian-founded voting systems company is at the centre of a poll irregularities controversy in the 2020 US presidential election with allegations against it from President Donald Trump’s camp.

But it appears that the company, Dominion Voting Systems, does not have the connections to Democrat Joe Biden, the projected winner of the November 3 election.

Trump’s lawyers, Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, have in TV interviews claimed that Dominion is linked to another company, Smartmatic Corp., one of whose directors, Peter Neffenger, is on the Biden transition’s review panel for the Department of Homeland Security.

However, it has been established that Smartmatic does not own Dominion and both companies are rivals in the election technology field.

In a tweet Trump said that “vote tabulated by a Radical Left privately owned company, Dominion, with a bad reputation & bum equipment that couldn’t even qualify for Texas (which I won by a lot)”.

And in another tweet he said: “Dominion is running our Election. Rigged!”

Trump has tried to link at least three instances of irregularities or mismanagement to Dominion because its systems were used.

In Michigan, where inaccuracies in reporting the votes were discovered, officials, however, said that they were due to human error and were not committed by the Dominion software.

Officials in Georgia said that Dominion software problems delayed the reporting of vote counts but did not affect the numbers.

Although founded by Canadians, that country does not use Dominion systems.

On Monday, Elections Canada, which runs the voting in the nation, tweeted that it “does not use Dominion Voting Systems. We use paper ballots counted by hand in front of scrutineers and have never used voting machines or electronic tabulators to count votes in our 100-year history.”

Trump re-tweeted it with the comment: “That says it all.”

Dominion, which has offices in Toronto and in Colorado, boasts on its web sites that its technology covers 40 per cent of the US electorate and is used in 28 states.

The Dominion Voting Systems Corp., which has its international headquarters in Toronto, was founded by John Poulos, who is its president and CEO, and James Hoover, its vice president.

Its subsidiaries include Premier Election Solutions and Sequoia Voting Systems, which it has acquired.

Its US company based in Colorado, Dominion Voting Systems, Inc., that was founded in 2009 lists two directors, Stephen Owens and Hootan Yaghoobzadeh, according to Bloomberg.

The two are co-founders of the US financial firm Staple Street Capital that is now the majority shareholder.

Smartmatic issued a statement: “Smartmatic has never owned any shares or had any financial stake in Dominion Voting Systems. Smartmatic has never provided Dominion Voting Systems with any software, hardware or other technology. The two companies are competitors in the marketplace.”

Powell claimed in a TV interview that Dominion had connections to Venezuela and was involved in altering the votes to help elect the late president and strongman Hugo Chavez.

However, it was Smartmatic that provided technology for Venezuelan elections and later the company accused its government of committing fraud.