Former GOP official buys controversial Dominion Voting Systems: 'Committed to transparency'

Dominion Voting Systems, the Canada-based company that was accused of helping throw the 2020 election to President Joe Biden, has been sold to Scott Leiendecker, the founder and chairman of the Missouri-based company Liberty Vote.

Leiendecker, a former Republican election director of the St. Louis City Board of Election Commissions who also serves as CEO of the election technology company KnowInk, said in a statement that Liberty Vote's "mission is rooted in American values and committed to transparency, independent audits, and verifiable paper records."

Liberty Vote has acquired Dominion, which will move all of its operations to the United States. The website for Dominion now also redirects to the Liberty Vote site.

Nevada's Democrat Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar has given him the stamp of approval.

In the spirit of President Donald Trump's March 25 executive order titled "Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections" — which insists upon a voter-verifiable paper record — Liberty Vote will apparently also prioritize the use of hand-marked paper ballots and third-party auditing to bolster election security.

According to the Daily Caller, Leiendecker conditioned the deal on dropping a number of outstanding defamation lawsuits against prominent conservatives as well as the One America News Network.

Although Dominion machines have had issues in the past — Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson admitted last year, for instance, that there was a nationwide "programming" issue with those Dominion voting machines that allowed access for people with disabilities — critics alleged in the wake of the 2020 election that Dominion manipulated votes in its electric terminals to help elect Joe Biden.

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Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

For instance, former federal prosecutor Sidney Powell suggested, without providing evidence, on Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures" that Dominion software was "where the fraud took place, where they were flipping votes in the computer system or adding votes that did not exist."

The platforming of such claims proved costly for Fox News, which agreed to pay $787.5 million in April 2023 to settle its defamation lawsuit with Dominion. In August, Newsmax reached a $67 million settlement with the company but maintained that its coverage was "fair, balanced, and conducted within professional standards of journalism."

Dominion has in recent months reached settlements with other outfits and individuals who raised concerns about the 2020 election, including former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani in late September and Powell in June.

Leiendecker told the Daily Caller that remaining litigation with MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell will be dropped per the terms of the acquisition agreement.

While Leiendecker is a Republican and has made a goodwill gesture to the conservatives targeted by his new acquisition, Liberty Vote officials signaled to Axios that he is ultimately a neutral actor, noting that Nevada's Democrat Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar has given him the stamp of approval, characterizing Leiendecker as "open, honest, and transparent."

Blaze News has reached out to Aguilar to confirm his support for Leiendecker.

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