This is a multi-part investigation into the security of American elections. Readers should know my voting registration is “no party preference.” I do not and have not voted for Democrats or Republicans at any level of local, state, or federal government. I vote only for Green Party and independent candidates.
My interest in promoting election security should not be mistaken for an argument Trump lost the 2020 election due to a rigged vote. I do not know whether the 2020 election result was fraudulent or not. I do know, however, that U.S. elections are not as secure as they should be, as this investigation will show.
Edward G. Arnold’s History of Voting Systems in California (1999) is an excellent resource. (Hereinafter California History.) Arnold worked in the Elections Division of the California Secretary of State’s Office for 27 years. Former California Secretary of State Bill Jones described Arnold as “one of the foremost experts in the country on voting machines and equipment.” (Id. at 4.) Jones called Arnold’s work a “gift from Ed to all Californians, representing as it does the only such history of voting systems and equipment used in California elections.” (Id.)
As Arnold notes, "[v]oting fraud is not the product of the modern age.” (Id. at 6.) “Before going into various attempts to incorporate technology in voting to prevent frauds in the [twenty-first] century, we need to know that voting machines, like frauds, existed earlier than we thought.” (Id.) Constitutional historians B. Caven and E. S. Staveley write in Greek and Roman Voting and Elections (1972) that laws against fraud in election date back to ancient times. Romans replaced the oral vote with a written ballot for elections (Lex Gainia in 139 B.C.), judicial decisions (Lex Cassia in 137 B.C.), and legislative votes (Lex Papiria in 130 B.C.). (Id. at 158-159, quoting Aristotle’s Athenian Politeia.) The Greeks had a crude allotment machine called the kleroterion (κληρωτήριον), which they used to select citizens to state office. The machine was filled with black and white beans, which number summed to the total number of citizens running as candidates, with white beans representing open seats and black beans representing the number by which candidates exceeded open seats. (Id. at 61.) Candidates who drew a white bean took office. (Id.) Since the beans looked like small balls, Italians called their written votes “ballotta,” which is the origin of the English word “ballot.” (California History at 7.)
The idea of a machine for voting, rather than random selection, is the brainchild of French inventor Josef Baranowski. (Id.) Baranowski invented a commercial calculating machine and wrote about how the machine could be used to count votes in his paper “Nouveau System de Voter” (1849) (“New Voting System”). Voters cast their vote by turning handles and pushing buttons representing the names of candidates. (California History at 7.) A decade later, Werner von Siemens would invent a primitive “yes”/“no” voting machine for legislative use. (Id.) A decade after that, Thomas Edison created the first vote count machine for use in Congress in 1869. (Id.) Jacob Myers would go on to standardize voting machines for election purposes in 1888. (Id.) The first use of the Myers’ Automatic Voting Machines (“AVM”) was in the 1892 elections in Lockport, New York. (Id.)
Fraud in elections and human error were major factors in the decision to replace paper ballots with voting machines in U.S. elections. (Id. at 4.) According to Arnold, former Los Angeles county Registrar of Voters Ben Hite found hand-counting paper ballots resulted in about a 5 percent error rate. (Id. at 5.) Although errors were random across precincts, meaning results of elections were not affected, paper ballots were susceptible to fraud. (Id.) Arnold cites voting machine specialist Roy G. Saltman’s U.S. National Bureau of Statistics special publication Accuracy, Integrity, and Security in Computerized Vote-Tallying (1988) on the weaknesses of paper ballots. Saltman observes “[o]ne reason for the acceptance [of lever voting machines] was the existence of significant fraud in the use of paper ballots.” (Id. at 27.) Arnold says, “Voting machines, modeled after a mechanical Australian [a.k.a “secret”] ballot, grew out of the need to correct the abuses which developed with the paper ballot and the need to provide a prompt and accurate count.” (California History at 11.) The objective of voting machines is to reduce, “as much as is possible, fraud, error, and carelessness on the part of the both the voters and election officials.” (Id. at 12.) Moreover, machines make it much easier and quicker to count votes. (Id.)
Arnold provides the following summary of the history of voting systems in California, from the creation of Edison’s machine, through to the state’s 1982 decision to shift responsibility for the machines from the State Commission of Voting to the Secretary of State’s office. (Id.) Between 1897 and 1984, the reliability and accuracy of voting machines was the responsibility of a three-person state commission headed by the Governor of California and including the Secretary of State and Attorney General. (Id. 14-15.)
Shortly after the passage of Proposition 6 (“Elections Provision for Adoption of Mechanical Devices”) in 1902, by which measure voters approved an amendment to the California Constitution permitting the use of voting machines in state elections, the first serious election fraud in California’s history occurred. (Id.)
San Francisco was the first city in California to use voting machines in 1904. The following year, all elections were conducted by voting machines in San Francisco. In a severe fire in 1906, most of the voting machines in the city were destroyed. Therefore, manufacturers offered the city a loan for the needed voting machines in the elections that year, as Zuckerman describes, ‘to make possible the conduct of the 1906 elections in the same fashion.’
Fraud or error was found in the use of voting machines in these elections. As Zuckerman notes, ‘the Grand Jury having found that some of the counters had already registered some voters at the opening of the polls.’ San Francisco discontinued the use of voting machines after the 1906 elections[.] The law was amended in 1907 so as to permit legislative committees to ascertain the votes cast and the mechanical working of the machines.
(Emphases added.) (Quoting David T. Zuckerman The Voting Machine: Report on the History, Use, and Advantages of Mechanical Means of Casting and Counting Ballots (1925) at 36.) (As we will see in Parts III and IV, which will focus on the evidence for election fraud in foreign and U.S. elections, respectively, there are other instances were voting machines were destroyed by fire in suspicious circumstances ahead of elections that returned suspect results.)
As a result of the San Francisco fraud, the California legislature passed various laws requiring public officials to have access to voting machines, which they would then seal until the day of the election (Chapter 343 § 2, 1907); requiring the machines and their records be preserved for six months following an election (Chapter 343 § 12, 1907); and, after later approving the use of electromechanical tabulation, requiring procedures to ensure accuracy in vote counts (Chapter 358 § 2, 1959) and manual inspections of the machines at least every two years (Chapter 1775, 1961).
Up until 1999, California used three different kinds of voting systems: lever machines, sense/optical scan voting systems, and punch card systems. (Id. at 19.) (See Arnold’s description of how each machine works, their relative strengths and weaknesses, and historical use in California and the wider United States, id. 19-33.)
At the turn of the millennium, between 40 to 60 percent of Americans voted using a punch card system. (Id. at 28.) A major problem with this system is it can result in a “hanging chad,” which occurs “when pressured holes are only partially punched out, without being noticed by the voters.” (Id. at 31.) The issue of hanging chads became a hot topic in the 2000 General Election as they hampered the accuracy of the recount in Florida, which ultimately led to President Bush’s election over former Vice President Al Gore.
As a result of the scandal, punch card machines were phased out in favor of Direct Recording Electronic (“DRE”) machines. (Id. at 39.) Voters use a touch screen to input their preferences into a DRE machine, which then records votes in computer memory and automatically tabulates the results. (Id.) Early iterations of DRE machines did not use an audit trail, making a manual recount impossible. (Id.) Nonetheless, DRE machines are in widespread use today, although some models now do create paper trails. Although DREs eliminated the problem of hanging chads, Arnold notes “some people question the reliability of the computer programs.” (Id. at 40.)
Arnold’s work concludes with a very useful timeline of the various players in the election services market. (See “Appendix 2: Systems and Equipment Approved for Use in California Elections,” id. 55- 86.)
The first name that stands out on the list is Remington Rand Corporation, which created the “UNIVAC 120 Punched Card Computer and Alphabetical Tabulator.” (Id. at 55.) Remington Rand was the contract manufacturer for the M1911A1 .45 caliber semi-automatic pistol used by U.S. Armed Forces in WWII.
The next noticeable name is United Aircraft Corporation, which produced the Norden Electronic Vote Tallying System. (Id.) United Aircraft Corp. became United Technologies in 1975, which merged with Raytheon Company in 2020 to form Raytheon Technologies.
The third name of note is Rockwell Manufacturing Co., which produced the Printer Pad for the AVM Model 105. (Id. at 56.) Rockwell Manufacturing became Rockwell International, a defense and aircraft manufacturer, which was spun-off into Boeing Integrated Defense Systems in 1996.
International Business Machines (IBM) entered the elections services market in 1965 after taking over Harris Votomatic Vote Recorder, producing the Votomatic Vote Recorder, Model 100, and the Model 1440 computer. (Id.) IBM had expertise in the punch card business from supplying the Nazis with the systems used to catalogue Jews in the holocaust.
Although it is notable a number of defense contractors were involved in the early development of machine voting systems, our main line of inquiry is where things get much more interesting.
Sequoia Voting Systems & Smartmatic (Intl.)
Mathematical Systems Corp was approved for use in CA in 1967. (California History at 56.) Diamond National Corp then acquired Mathematical Systems Corp, which was approved in 1968. (Id. at 57.) Diamond National Corp became Diamond International Corp, approved in 1973. (Id. at 60.) Diamond International Corp became Diamond International Corp., Emeryville, approved in 1982. (Id. at 66.) Diamond merged with a packaging company to create Smurffit Diamond Packaging Corporation, Emeryville, approved in 1983. (Id. at 67.) Smurffit Diamond spun off its punched-card voting business in 1983 as Sequoia Pacific Systems Corporation, which merged with Automatic Voting Machine Corporation to form Sequoia Voting Systems in 1983. In 2007, it was revealed Sequoia had sold the infamously faulty punch cards used during the 2000 U.S. election — the very mistake that precipitated the move away from punch cards and towards electronic voting machines in U.S. elections.
The 2000 handing chad episode was the motivation for Antonio Mugica, founder and CEO, to pivot Smartmatic (founded in 1997) into the voting machine business. According to Forbes:
Mugica and Piñate met as engineering students at Simón Bolívar University, the so-called MIT of Venezuela, and started Smartmatic in 2000 at the height of the first Internet bubble. The company, which was originally based in Florida, began life as a cyber security business aimed at building secure connections between bank branches. While working on that business from Mugica’s family vacation home in Boca Raton, the two friends had front row seats to Florida’s “hanging chad” debacle in the 2000 election. They saw an explosion of interest in modernizing America’s elections, and they wanted in.
Presumably because the optics of being a Venezuelan-based election security company are not good for business, Mugica restructured Smartmatic into Smartmatic International, a London-based company. Smartmatic Intl. purchased Sequoia on March 8, 2005. According to a May 30, 2005, contract between Smartmatic and the state of Michigan, “Sequoia Voting Systems support staff is supplemented by Smartmatic Corporation who have successfully worked with Sequoia staff in many large elections in 2002.” (Pg. 101.) Smartmatic purchased Sequoia in 2005 as part of aggressive consolidation in the industry and the company's push into the U.S. market following the 2004 Venezuela election, which Smartmatic ran for the Chavez regime.
The acquisition of a U.S. elections service provider by a Venezuelan entity led Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-NY) to express her concerns about the deal. The New York Times reported the U.S. government investigated Smatmatic’s ties to Venezuela following the deal. Smartmatic announced it had sold Sequoia in 2007 in response to public scrutiny. However, the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (an official government agency) called into question the nature and legitimacy of the sale shortly thereafter.
[A]n investment group led by Sequoia management reportedly bought Sequoia from Smartmatic in late 2007 under terms that were not made public. Since then, however, it has come to light that Smartmatic continues to own the software that counts the votes on Sequoia voting machines and licenses to Sequoia that software, which Smartmatic develops in Venezuela. Concern, now, is that Smartmatic’s sale of Sequoia “was fraudulent”,1 “a sham transaction designed to fool regulators.”2
In 2014, Mugica announced SGO Corporation, a holding company based in London that owns Smartmatic Intl. Lord Marc Malloch-Brown became chairman of the board of directors.
In late 2002, Malloch Brown offered to assist talks between Hugo Chavez's Bolivarian government and the opposition, who was seeking to begin the process of attempting to recall Chávez a year later. His UNDP observers were chosen by Venezuela's National Electoral Council (CNE) to supervise the signature collection for the 2004 Venezuela recall.
Fascist conspiracy theories of George Soros's involvement in financing election technology companies may in part be attributed to Malloch-Brown's relationship with Soros. Malloch-Brown is vice-chairman of Soros Fund Management and the Open Society Institute and was previously vice-president of the Soros Quantum Fund.
Sir Nigel Knowles, former global co-chairman of law firm DLA Piper, is also on the board of SGO Corporation, as is David Giampaolo, CEO of Pi Capital, a private equity firm in London with 300 clients.
The Independent reported in 2007 that Pi members have invested over £150m since Giampaolo’s buy-out. Under Giampaolo the club has refocused to become more like a salon, arranging monthly events with speakers on intellectual as well as financial topics. Previous speakers include Bill Clinton [and] Kofi Annan[.]
Election Systems & Software
The corporate history of ES&S begins with American Information Systems (“AIS”).
In October 1974, Robert J. Urosevich of the Klopp Printing Company of Omaha approached Westinghouse Learning Corporation (a subsidiary of Westinghouse Corporation) with a simple question: Could the scanners Westinghouse was building for educational tests be used to scan ballots? This led Westinghouse to briefly enter the ballot scanning business, and Robert Urosevich and his brother Tod, a former IBM salesman, formed Data Mark Systems to sell and service Westinghouse vote tabulation equipment. Data Mark and Westinghouse ballot tabulation equipment saw limited success through the late 1970s. As Westinghouse withdrew from the voting business, the Urosevich brothers and several former Westinghouse employees founded a new company in August 1979, American Information Systems (AIS). AIS came out with a line of central-count ballot scanners that entered the marketplace in 1982.
The corporate history continues with the Business Records Corporation (“BRC”).
The first precinct-count ballot scanner was the Gyrex MTB-1, which came to market around 1974. The MTB-1 evolved into the MTB-2 while corporate ownership shifted from Gyrex Corporation to Valtec, in 1977, to Major Data Concepts, in 1979. Computer Election Systems Incorporated (CESI), a manufacturer of Votomatic punched-card voting equipment, marketed the MTB-2 as the Tally-II scanner in the early 1980s, pairing it with its own Precinct-Ballot-Conut punched-card ballot reader, the PBC.
CESI developed its own family of precinct-count and later central-count scanners, under the Optech brand name. The Optech I precinct-count scanner came to market in 1983, and saw successful use in several states. Cronus Industries, Inc., a Texas company, purchased CESI in 1985 and merged it with their ballot printing subsidiary, Business Records Corporation[.]
(Emphasis added.) This is the first time the "Optech" brand name appears. Optech stands for "optical technology,” one of the kinds of voting machine systems that scans ballots electronically, which became popular after the move away from punch hole ballots.
AIS acquired the election services division of BRC, including the Optech brand name and license, which business then rebranded as ES&S in 1997. Shortly after the AIS/BRC merger, ES&S acquired the license to Votronic, a DRE machine brand.
The U.S. Department of Justice (“DoJ”) had concerns about the AIS/BRC merger on antitrust grounds, presumably because ES&S would possess the licenses for two technologies: optical scanning (Optech) and buttons/touch sensor (Votronic). The DoJ sanctioned the merger on condition ES&S transferred the Optech license to Sequoia. Therefore, Sequoia was the owner of the Optech license at the time of the 2000 Venezuela election, which is a plausible reason for why the company attracted a takeover by Smartmatic. According to Smartmatic, the companies had been working together since 2002, which begs the question whether Smartmatic had access to Sequoia’s Optech during the 2004 Venezuela election.
The funding to start BRC/ES&S originally came from two billionaires: Californian William Ahmanson and Texan oilman Nelson Bunker Hunt. Hunt and Ahmanson were also large donors to Chalcedon Foundation, which is Christian Reconstructionism's main thinktank. Further, Hunt was one of five founders of the Council for National Policy (“CNP”), an umbrella organization and networking group for social conservative activists in the United States. Paul Weyrich, another co-founder of CNP, infamously said in 1980, “I don't want everybody to vote." Although CNP members lists are confidential, the Southern Poverty Law Center acquired the 2014 list, naming Kellyanne Conway (Senior Counselor to President Trump), Steve Bannon (Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor to Trump), Richard DeVos (father of the husband of Trump’s former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos), Jim DeMint (former U.S. Senator from South Carolina and former President of the Heritage Foundation), Wayne LaPierre (head of the NRA), Vice President Mike Pence (in the Trump Administration), and Ken Blackwell (a member of Trump's voter fraud commission). CNP’s mission 2014 statement is . . . interesting:
A united conservative movement to assure, by 2020, policy leadership and governance that restores religious and economic freedom, a strong national defense, and Judeo-Christian values under the Constitution.
The Southern Poverty Law Center notes:
But it has long been known that [CNP] included some key individuals whose goals are less benevolent. One of its five founders, Tim LaHaye, is the co-author of the Left Behind series of apocalyptic Christian novels and a man who has described gay people as “vile,” said the Illuminati are conspiring to establish a “new world order,” attacked Catholicism, and once worked for the wildly conspiracist John Birch Society.
Premier Election Solutions
Another election services company, Diebold, entered the voting machine business in 2002 with the acquisition of Global Election Systems. Diebold's Election Division was run by Bob Urosevich who, along with his brother, Todd, had founded ES&S.
The Senior VP, programmer, and majority shareholder of Global Elections Systems is a man named Jeffrey Dean. Dean is a convicted federal felon and hacker. “Dean served time in a Washington state correctional facility for stealing money and tampering with computer files in a scheme that “involved a high degree of sophistication and planning. . . . [Dean] wrote and maintained . . . code used to count hundreds of thousands of votes.
Dean also programmed the General Election Management System (“GEMS”) central tabulator system, which counted one-third of the votes in 37 states in the 2004 General Election. Diebold enjoyed 50 percent market share in US voting systems that year.
Diebold rebranded to Premier Election Systems (“PES”) in 2006. ES&S acquired Premier in 2009. Again, in May 2010, the consolidation in the industry prompted the DoJ to intervene with antitrust measures, which forced Diebold/Premier to split some assets between ES&S and Dominion Voting Systems, a Canadian company founded in 2002. Dominion acquired from PES all intellectual property, software, firmware and hardware for Premier’s current and legacy optical scan, central scan, and touch screen voting systems, and all versions of the GEMS election management system — the very system designed by felon hacker Jeffrey Dean.
Dominion Voting Systems
Then on June 4, barely a month after the DoJ's antitrust enforcement against PES, Dominion acquired Sequoia (formerly Smartmatic). Dominion therefore appears to have bypassed antitrust regulation by consolidating licenses to touch screens, optical scanning technology, and the general election management system.
In 2013, Dominion pitched the state of Colorado for business. Dominion’s pitch deck for the deal reveals their systems were designed by Ronald Morales. Morales previously built voting systems at Smartmatic and Sequoia.
Ronald Morales is a Systems Engineer with more than 15 years of experience, providing technological expertise and solutions to ensure quality implementation and integration of Dominion Voting System products. Ronald began his career in elections when he joined Smartmatic in 2004 where he managed the EMS Quality Assurance process for elections in Venezuela. After the acquisition of Sequoia by Smartmatic, Ronald was responsible for the integration of Smartmatic’s newly-developed equipment with Sequoia’s EMS and for the EAC certification of the integrated solution. When Dominion Voting Systems acquired Sequoia and assets of Premier Election Solutions in 2010, Ronald began working with modifications and new solutions in software and hardware for the Premier product line, along with the EAC certification process of the updated products. In his current role, Ronald is engaged in the research and implementation of new technologies with a focus on reliability, performance and efficiency, for both existing legacy systems (Sequoia and Premier) and systems currently in development by Dominion. His most noticeable achievement is the design and implementation of fully redundant Dominion Democracy Suite EMS server infrastructure for the elections in Mongolia during 2012 and 2013.
Dominion and ES&S now account for about 90 percent of all U.S. voting equipment and effectively have a duopoly on American elections. ES&S remains under the ownership of Omaha-based private equity group McCarthy Capital and Dominion is privately held with unknown investors.
Compare what you know you know now to the following headlines from so-called ‘fact-checkers’ and ‘reliable’ establishmentarian media:
CNN says Dominion has “no corporate ties with Venezuela[.]” But, in fact, Dominion’s systems architect, Ronald Morales, designed the voting systems at Dominion, Sequoia, and Smartmatic, which company is led by Venezuelans and was originally based in Venezuela, which company’s machines were used to elect Hugo Chavez. Further, Dominion now owns the licenses to technology that Smartmatic once owned through their takeover of Sequoia. Further, the chairman of the board of Smartmatic, Malloch-Brown, was the U.K.’s political officer responsible for overseeing the 2004 Venezuelan election. Further, Malloch-Brown is vice-chairman of Soros Fund Management. Further, while Smartmatic is not connected to the Clinton Foundation, a board member of Smartmatic’s holding company, Giampaolo, invited Bill Clinton to speak to his private equity firm.
Reuters repeated the false claim Dominion “is not linked” to Venezuela.
Other establishmentarian media outlets pushed the straw man that Chavez’s family owned Dominion, and then debunked a claim no one was making while framing it as a conspiracy for people who were “truly nuts.”
The straw man is a favorite tool of spinmeisters. For example, Reuters debunked the claim Smartmatic’s CEO is not on Biden’s team, but the fact is Smartmatic USA’s Chairman, former Admiral Peter Neffenger, is a member of Biden's transition team. Similarly, the claim is not that Smartmatic’s software is on Dominion voting machines, it is that the person who built Dominion’s systems is the same person who built Smartmatic’s systems, and that Dominion now owns licenses once controlled by Smartmatic through Sequoia.
Up until this point I have expressed no personal opinions, choosing instead to source every fact presented to authenticated evidence.
In my personal opinion, the ownership of licenses for three key technologies used in voting machines today, namely DRE touch-sensors, Optech ballot scanning, and GEMS tabulation, by one foreign company — Dominion — heightens the risk of fraud in U.S. elections.
Further, in my personal opinion, it is not comforting fascist billionaires financed ES&S, whose acolytes are now embedded in MAGA’s senior political leadership; it is not reassuring that Sequoia/Smartmatic is managed by Venezuelans with ties to the communist Chavez regime; it is concerning that PES’s GEMS system, now owned by Dominion, was created by a convicted federal hacker; and it is alarming that all of these private companies do not have to report who are their shareholders who have a financial interest, presumably, not only in the companies, but in the outcomes of U.S. elections.
This is Law and Politics. Until next time . . . .
Gerardo Reyes, Vote machine firm ties to Venezuela questioned; A Chicago Alderman is not satisfied that a voting-systems company is free of influence from Venezuela President Hugo Chavez, MIAMI HERALD, Mar. 19, 2008, at 3 (article available for purchase at http://www.miamiherald.com).
Letter from Edward M. Burke, Chairman of the Chicago City Council Committee on Finance to Langdon D. Neal, Chairman, Chicago Board of Election Commissioners (Jan. 11, 2008), available at http://www.bradblog.com/Docs/SequoiaSmartmaticLetter_Chicago_EdBurkeToLangdonNeal_011108.pdf.