One of the questions about the 2020 U.S. election is the issue of voting machines and their software, which involves a complex web of foreign connections, confusing ownership structures, a lack of transparency, and questions about the connections between three voting system companies (Dominion, Smartmatic, and Sequoia).
To date, numerous lawsuits, public records, and witness interviews have shed light on these issues.
Several people with knowledge of the matter have been interviewed recently, including an intelligence officer with knowledge of the Venezuelan government and its criminal activities, a former CIA officer with knowledge of Latin American politics and counterterrorism activities, and the former head of Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE), who has exposed election fraud. Two of them requested anonymity.
At the heart of the voting machine issue is Dominion’s related technology. According to the company’s website, Dominion voting systems are used in 28 U.S. states and Puerto Rico. More than 40 percent of voters cast their ballots in the election using Dominion voting systems, including 2.2 million voters in 65 of Michigan’s 83 counties, all 159 counties in Georgia, and Maricopa County, Arizona’s largest county.
In addition, Smartmatic has shifted its focus in recent years from providing software and voting machines to project management and election consulting services.
Getting to the Roots
Founded in 1997 by three Venezuelan engineers – Antonio Mugica, Alfredo Jose, and Roger Piñate – Smartmatic specializes in electronic voting systems, identity management, and citizen registration systems and identification products.
Initially a little-known company belonging to a consortium of state-owned Venezuelan software companies, Smartmatic was chosen by the then-socialist dictator Hugo Chávez in a 2004 referendum in Venezuela. At the time, the media and poll watchers questioned the massive fraudulent nature of the referendum.
In April 2000, Smartmatic was incorporated in Delaware, with headquarters in Boca Raton, Florida, and in April 2003, the company released a new electronic automated voting machine (EVM), which it had developed in-house, from design to operation of the software and hardware. In 2004 and 2012, Smartmatic moved its headquarters to Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and London, England.
According to WikiLeaks, a July 20, 2006 diplomatic cable from the U.S. State Department (click here to view), Smartmatic’s 30 anonymous investors and unnamed partners are mainly high-ranking Venezuelan officials, including Defense Minister Jose Vicente Rangel and Luis Miquelina, an advisor to Chavez.
Antonio Mugica, CEO of Smartmatic, has publicly admitted that the Venezuelan government rigged the country’s 2017 Constituent Assembly elections and that the turnout was inflated by at least one million people.
Chavez, who died in 2013, called Cuba’s communist dictator Fidel Castro “father and comrade”. Castro paid tribute to Chavez at the time of his death. Chávez’s successor, current Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, has formed an alliance with the Chinese Communist Party and Russia. In March of this year the Trump administration accused Maduro of “narco-terrorism”.
Election Results “Rigged
One of the witnesses interviewed by the Epoch Times was Ana Mercedes Díaz, who was appointed by the Venezuelan government as deputy head of the Electoral Council in 1991 and director of political parties for the Electoral Council (one of the five government departments that oversee elections and referendums in Venezuela) in 2003.
A referendum was held in Venezuela in 2004, the same year that Diaz was fired after issuing a report on electoral fraud during the referendum. According to Diaz, what is happening in the United States is exactly what Smartmatic is doing in Venezuela.
Smartmatic has admitted that the results of the election could be manipulated,” he said. Although Smartmatic started in Venezuela, it has been proven that the company has committed fraud wherever it has gone, and what is happening in the United States is one of those things,” Diaz said. Diaz told the Epoch Times, “The Smartmatic program was able to count Trump’s votes in Biden’s name, and it was impossible to detect.
After Diaz was fired, she obtained a copy of the contract between the Venezuelan government and Smartmatic from a source within the electoral commission. She found out that the contract was signed after only three days of negotiation and that one of the criteria the Electoral Board used to select the voting system company at the time was no prior experience in elections, and she wondered why the government would choose such a company.
Diaz later immigrated to the United States. Chavez won all the elections from the 2004 referendum until his death in 2013 by relying on the ‘fraudulent system,'” she said.
Díaz also noted other similarities – many tellers mentioned in their affidavits that field staff prevented tellers from overseeing the counting process. In Venezuela, she said, “the scrutineers were also refused permission to supervise the count.
In the Venezuelan referendum, [Chavez’s] opponent was ahead, but the counting stopped, and when the counting restarted, the vote was reversed. I found out that the counting also stopped abruptly in the U.S. election process …… and no one knows what happened,” she said. She said.
“Nothing was done for hours – it was exactly the same as Smartmatic’s operation during the Venezuelan referendum, exactly the same.
Diaz revealed that Venezuela is exporting voting machines to Latin American and Asian countries, suggesting that election results around the world could be affected. Previously, the U.S. government has repeatedly sanctioned officials in Maduro’s government for alleged corruption and undermining democracy.
The 2006 U.S. State Department diplomatic cables revealed by WikiLeaks also show that Smartmatic “is allegedly pulling out of the Venezuelan elections and is currently focusing its operations in other countries around the world, including the United States, through its subsidiary Sequoia (Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc.)”.
Smartmatic is an ‘enigma’ that came out of nowhere to win the multi-million dollar contracts in the elections (in Venezuela 2004) that ensured that Chavez would eventually take power and defeat all of his political opponents,” the cable said. Our discussions led us to conclude that Smartmatic is in fact a Venezuelan company, run by Venezuelans.
Another witness interviewed, a former CIA official familiar with Latin American politics and counterterrorism activities, told the Epoch Times that his team’s investigation found that more than 20 percent of Venezuelans signed a recall referendum in 2003 calling for Chávez’s ouster, and that Chávez had been working on the voting machines ever since, trying to stay in power.
He said that Chávez initially approached a Spanish company called Indra, but found the company to be “inflexible” and contacted Smartmatic. Smartmatic denied that Chávez had approached it, saying that the entire process was done through the Electoral Council. In the end, Smartmatic was awarded a $91 million contract, approved by five members of the Electoral Commission who supported Chavez.
The former CIA official described the 2004 Venezuelan elections. He said, “At midnight on election day (that night), the voting machines suddenly stopped counting the votes and Chávez was trailing. By 3:00 a.m., it was Chávez with a 10% lead,” he said. Smartmatic spokesman Samira Saba explained that the voting machines did not count the votes in real time.
Smartmatic and Sequoia Acquisition in Dispute
In 2005, Smartmatic acquired Sequoia Corporation, headquartered in Oakland, California, at a time when 17 states and the U.S. capital, Washington, D.C., had installed Sequoia election equipment.
At the time, the connection between Smartmatic and Chavez was widely questioned in the United States. A year after the acquisition, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) opened a national security investigation.
The focus of the investigation was on Smartmatic’s intricate corporate structure. The aforementioned 2006 State Department diplomatic cable stated: “Smartmatic claims to be a U.S. company, but in reality it has a network of contacts in the Netherlands and in Barbados that control the company, and the real owners remain concealed – possibly a few high-ranking Venezuelan officials.
The first to call for an investigation into the acquisition in 2006 were then-U.S. Treasury Secretary John William Snow and federal Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney. They questioned whether the Venezuelan government could have used the Sequoia voting system to manipulate the U.S. election.
Smartmatic refused to be investigated by the U.S. government, claiming that all the allegations were rumors, and attempted to respond to the questions. In 2007, however, the matter ended with the sale of Sequoia by Smartmatic. The sale was to private U.S. investors who comprised Sequoia’s current executive management team, headed by Sequoia President and CEO Jack Blaine and Chief Financial Officer Peter McManemy.
A year after the sale of Sequoia by Smartmatic, in 2008, it was revealed that Sequoia was owned by “SVS Holdings” and that Smartmatic was still the owner of Sequoia’s intellectual property.
Dominion removes statement on Sequoia acquisition
Dominion Voting Systems was founded in 2002 in Toronto, Canada, and also has offices in the U.S. and Serbia, where it was joined in 2010 by Eric Coomer, former Vice President of Smartmatic.
On June 4, 2010 Dominion issued a statement saying, “It has acquired the assets of Sequoia Corporation, a major U.S. provider of election solutions, serving 300 jurisdictions in 16 states. The statement has now been removed from the Internet, but investigative journalist Brad Friedman has preserved the original.
The statement reads, “In this transaction, Dominion acquired Sequoia’s goods and all intellectual property, including software, firmware, and hardware for Sequoia’s count scanning and DRE election solutions, including BPS, WinEDS, Edge, Edge2, Advantage, Insight. InsightPlus and 400C systems.
“Dominion employs Sequoia’s highly competent, experienced and responsive customer service and technical staff to ensure that its services are available to all jurisdictions that use Sequoia, the statement said.
The statement also mentioned that the acquisition has been reviewed by the U.S. Department of Justice and nine state attorneys general, as well as reviewed and approved by the Committee on Foreign Investment.
Previously, in July 2009, Business Wire reported that Sequoia and Dominion had signed a tentative contract with the State of New York for New York to “purchase election equipment and related services from Dominion, with Dominion assuming all of Sequoia’s responsibilities under the contract,” the statement said.
Neither party disclosed details of the transaction, but both Dominion and Sequoia were satisfied with the outcome of the agreement, the report said.
Dominion Voting Systems’ office building in Toronto.
In 2012, the association between Dominion and Smartmatic came under renewed scrutiny. At that time, Smartmatic filed a lawsuit in the Delaware Court of Chancery against Dominion for allegedly violating the license agreement and interfering with Smartmatic’s business.
According to a September 18, 2012, Business Wire report, Smartmatic alleges that Dominion’s refusal to provide technology and services, despite having licensed them, is intended to discredit Smartmatic’s brand, harm Smartmatic’s relationship with its customers, and cause disruption to Smartmatic’s business. Smartmatic demanded that Dominion compensate it for the negative impact it had on Dominion’s future development. The case was settled out of court.
Previously, in 2009, the two companies had contracted Dominion to provide optical scanners to Smartmatic for the 2010 Philippine elections. The election, which was described as “the largest automated election ever run by a private company,” was plagued by software glitches.
In a recent interview with Newsmax TV, a former congressman with knowledge of the election said that the voting systems were able to “preload” ballots and delete ballots for specific candidates during that year’s election. He quoted another senator, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. as saying, “What they are selling is not an electronic ballot system, they are selling a fraud, no matter who pays for it.
After the above-mentioned Philippine elections, Dominion and Smartmatic faced a lot of lawsuits and a bad reputation, which also had an impact on the 2013 midterm elections.
This historical episode illustrates that Dominion and Smartmatic were successively in control of Sequoia, while Smartmatic’s intellectual property rights remained with Sequoia. It is unclear whether Dominion will use Sequoia’s software in the 2020 U.S. election.
Many Venezuelans working for Sequoia are alleged to have worked for both Dominion and Smartmatic, and have become contractors for those companies.
An intelligence source with deep knowledge of Venezuela and its criminality told the Epoch Times that they were able to use Smartmatic’s voting machines to know how many votes they were behind, and then were able to generate votes and convert them.
There have been numerous news reports in recent years about problems with Sequoia’s voting software. In October 2006, for example, one of Sequoia’s Denver voting machine contractors sent a letter to 44,000 voters warning of an error in their absentee ballots – they discovered that the “yes” and “no” options on the ballots had been swapped.
The Hidden Foreign Power Behind Dominion’s Voting System
In 2018, Staple Street Capital, a New York-based private equity firm, acquired Dominion in a deal arranged by UBS Securities LLC, a UBS Group company.
Three of UBS Securities’ four board members are Chinese, and at least one of them lives in Hong Kong. In 2012, a Chinese joint venture company, UBS Securities Co. Ltd. was established, calling itself “China’s first fully-licensed securities company with foreign investment”.
Dominion did not immediately respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment. According to information on the company’s website, it denies any association with Smartmatic and Sequoia.
John R. Mills, director of cybersecurity policy, strategy and international affairs in the Office of the Former U.S. Secretary of Defense, told the Epoch Times, “There is a crossover between Venezuelan software and firmware developers and voting machine companies, including Dominion. Venezuela is involved in China (Communist Party), Russia, and Iran influencing the U.S., so it’s not surprising that this intricate connection is in place.
A Smartmatic spokesperson and information on its website deny any association with Dominion and Sequoia. The spokesperson stated that Smartmatic will only be used in the Los Angeles area in the 2020 U.S. elections.
Reporters who personally visited Dominion offices in Denver and Toronto found that both offices no longer exist; Smartmatic’s office in Florida denied media access.
The Dominion Voting Systems office in Denver appears to be empty.
Diaz later immigrated to the United States. Chavez won all the elections from the 2004 referendum until his death in 2013 by relying on the ‘fraudulent system,'” she said.
Díaz also noted other similarities – many tellers mentioned in their affidavits that field staff prevented tellers from overseeing the counting process. In Venezuela, she said, “the scrutineers were also refused permission to supervise the count.
In the Venezuelan referendum, [Chavez’s] opponent was ahead, but the counting stopped, and when the counting restarted, the vote was reversed. I found out that the counting also stopped abruptly in the U.S. election process …… and no one knows what happened,” she said. She said.
“Nothing was done for hours – it was exactly the same as Smartmatic’s operation during the Venezuelan referendum, exactly the same.
Diaz revealed that Venezuela is exporting voting machines to Latin American and Asian countries, suggesting that election results around the world could be affected. Previously, the U.S. government has repeatedly sanctioned officials in Maduro’s government for alleged corruption and undermining democracy.
The 2006 U.S. State Department diplomatic cables revealed by WikiLeaks also show that Smartmatic “is allegedly pulling out of the Venezuelan elections and is currently focusing its operations in other countries around the world, including the United States, through its subsidiary Sequoia (Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc.)”.
Smartmatic is an ‘enigma’ that came out of nowhere to win the multi-million dollar contracts in the elections (in Venezuela 2004) that ensured that Chavez would eventually take power and defeat all of his political opponents,” the cable said. Our discussions led us to conclude that Smartmatic is in fact a Venezuelan company, run by Venezuelans.
Another witness interviewed, a former CIA official familiar with Latin American politics and counterterrorism activities, told the Epoch Times that his team’s investigation found that more than 20 percent of Venezuelans signed a recall referendum in 2003 calling for Chávez’s ouster, and that Chávez had been working on the voting machines ever since, trying to stay in power.
He said that Chávez initially approached a Spanish company called Indra, but found the company to be “inflexible” and contacted Smartmatic. Smartmatic denied that Chávez had approached it, saying that the entire process was done through the Electoral Council. In the end, Smartmatic was awarded a $91 million contract, approved by five members of the Electoral Commission who supported Chavez.
The former CIA official described the 2004 Venezuelan elections. He said, “At midnight on election day (that night), the voting machines suddenly stopped counting the votes and Chávez was trailing. By 3:00 a.m., it was Chávez with a 10% lead,” he said. Smartmatic spokesman Samira Saba explained that the voting machines did not count the votes in real time.
Smartmatic and Sequoia Acquisition in Dispute
In 2005, Smartmatic acquired Sequoia Corporation, headquartered in Oakland, California, at a time when 17 states and the U.S. capital, Washington, D.C., had installed Sequoia election equipment.
At the time, the connection between Smartmatic and Chavez was widely questioned in the United States. A year after the acquisition, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) opened a national security investigation.
The focus of the investigation was on Smartmatic’s intricate corporate structure. The aforementioned 2006 State Department diplomatic cable stated: “Smartmatic claims to be a U.S. company, but in reality it has a network of contacts in the Netherlands and in Barbados that control the company, and the real owners remain concealed – possibly a few high-ranking Venezuelan officials.
The first to call for an investigation into the acquisition in 2006 were then-U.S. Treasury Secretary John William Snow and federal Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney. They questioned whether the Venezuelan government could have used the Sequoia voting system to manipulate the U.S. election.
Smartmatic refused to be investigated by the U.S. government, claiming that all the allegations were rumors, and attempted to respond to the questions. In 2007, however, the matter ended with the sale of Sequoia by Smartmatic. The sale was to private U.S. investors who comprised Sequoia’s current executive management team, headed by Sequoia President and CEO Jack Blaine and Chief Financial Officer Peter McManemy.
A year after the sale of Sequoia by Smartmatic, in 2008, it was revealed that Sequoia was owned by “SVS Holdings” and that Smartmatic was still the owner of Sequoia’s intellectual property.
Dominion removes statement on Sequoia acquisition
Dominion Voting Systems was founded in 2002 in Toronto, Canada, and also has offices in the U.S. and Serbia, where it was joined in 2010 by Eric Coomer, former Vice President of Smartmatic.
On June 4, 2010 Dominion issued a statement saying, “It has acquired the assets of Sequoia Corporation, a major U.S. provider of election solutions, serving 300 jurisdictions in 16 states. The statement has now been removed from the Internet, but investigative journalist Brad Friedman has preserved the original.
The statement reads, “In this transaction, Dominion acquired Sequoia’s goods and all intellectual property, including software, firmware, and hardware for Sequoia’s count scanning and DRE election solutions, including BPS, WinEDS, Edge, Edge2, Advantage, Insight. InsightPlus and 400C systems.
“Dominion employs Sequoia’s highly competent, experienced and responsive customer service and technical staff to ensure that its services are available to all jurisdictions that use Sequoia, the statement said.
The statement also mentioned that the acquisition has been reviewed by the U.S. Department of Justice and nine state attorneys general, as well as reviewed and approved by the Committee on Foreign Investment.
Previously, in July 2009, Business Wire reported that Sequoia and Dominion had signed a tentative contract with the State of New York for New York to “purchase election equipment and related services from Dominion, with Dominion assuming all of Sequoia’s responsibilities under the contract,” the statement said.
Neither party disclosed details of the transaction, but both Dominion and Sequoia were satisfied with the outcome of the agreement, the report said.
Dominion Voting Systems’ office building in Toronto.
In 2012, the association between Dominion and Smartmatic came under renewed scrutiny. At that time, Smartmatic filed a lawsuit in the Delaware Court of Chancery against Dominion for allegedly violating the license agreement and interfering with Smartmatic’s business.
According to a September 18, 2012, Business Wire report, Smartmatic alleges that Dominion’s refusal to provide technology and services, despite having licensed them, is intended to discredit Smartmatic’s brand, harm Smartmatic’s relationship with its customers, and cause disruption to Smartmatic’s business. Smartmatic demanded that Dominion compensate it for the negative impact it had on Dominion’s future development. The case was settled out of court.
Previously, in 2009, the two companies had contracted Dominion to provide optical scanners to Smartmatic for the 2010 Philippine elections. The election, which was described as “the largest automated election ever run by a private company,” was plagued by software glitches.
In a recent interview with Newsmax TV, a former congressman with knowledge of the election said that the voting systems were able to “preload” ballots and delete ballots for specific candidates during that year’s election. He quoted another senator, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. as saying, “What they are selling is not an electronic ballot system, they are selling a fraud, no matter who pays for it.
After the above-mentioned Philippine elections, Dominion and Smartmatic faced a lot of lawsuits and a bad reputation, which also had an impact on the 2013 midterm elections.
This historical episode illustrates that Dominion and Smartmatic were successively in control of Sequoia, while Smartmatic’s intellectual property rights remained with Sequoia. It is unclear whether Dominion will use Sequoia’s software in the 2020 U.S. election.
Many Venezuelans working for Sequoia are alleged to have worked for both Dominion and Smartmatic, and have become contractors for those companies.
An intelligence source with deep knowledge of Venezuela and its criminality told the Epoch Times that they were able to use Smartmatic’s voting machines to know how many votes they were behind, and then were able to generate votes and convert them.
There have been numerous news reports in recent years about problems with Sequoia’s voting software. In October 2006, for example, one of Sequoia’s Denver voting machine contractors sent a letter to 44,000 voters warning of an error in their absentee ballots – they discovered that the “yes” and “no” options on the ballots had been swapped.
The Hidden Foreign Power Behind Dominion’s Voting System
In 2018, Staple Street Capital, a New York-based private equity firm, acquired Dominion in a deal arranged by UBS Securities LLC, a UBS Group company.
Three of UBS Securities’ four board members are Chinese, and at least one of them lives in Hong Kong. In 2012, a Chinese joint venture company, UBS Securities Co. Ltd. was established, calling itself “China’s first fully-licensed securities company with foreign investment”.
Dominion did not immediately respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment. According to information on the company’s website, it denies any association with Smartmatic and Sequoia.
John R. Mills, director of cybersecurity policy, strategy and international affairs in the Office of the Former U.S. Secretary of Defense, told the Epoch Times, “There is a crossover between Venezuelan software and firmware developers and voting machine companies, including Dominion. Venezuela is involved in China (Communist Party), Russia, and Iran influencing the U.S., so it’s not surprising that this intricate connection is in place.
A Smartmatic spokesperson and information on its website deny any association with Dominion and Sequoia. The spokesperson stated that Smartmatic will only be used in the Los Angeles area in the 2020 U.S. elections.
Reporters who personally visited Dominion offices in Denver and Toronto found that both offices no longer exist; Smartmatic’s office in Florida denied media access.
The Dominion Voting Systems office in Denver appears to be empty.
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