‘Designed to rig elec­tions’: Trump’s legal team demands probe of Domin­ion vot­ing software

Pres­i­dent Trump’s legal team on Sun­day said accu­sa­tions of rigged vot­ing machines not only cast doubt on the elec­tion results but also demand a nation­al secu­ri­ty investigation.

Domin­ion Vot­ing Sys­tems‘ wide­ly used bal­lot-scan­ning machines and vote tab­u­la­tion soft­ware are sus­pect­ed of inflat­ing vote totals for pre­sumed Pres­i­dent-elect Joseph R. Biden. Those sus­pi­cions so far are not ful­ly substantiated.

The com­pa­ny, how­ev­er, is not a stranger to elec­tion integri­ty con­cerns, includ­ing a cor­po­rate lin­eage with links to the late Venezue­lan social­ist strong­man Hugo Chavez.

“It was designed to rig elec­tions,” Sid­ney Pow­ell, a leader of the Trump legal team, told Fox News Channel’s Maria Bar­tiro­mo on her “Sun­day Morn­ing Futures” program.

Ms. Pow­ell said Mr. Trump should fire CIA Direc­tor Gina Haspel for allow­ing the soft­ware to be used through­out the U.S.

“It should nev­er have been installed any­where,” she said.

For­mer New York May­or Rudolph W. Giu­liani, anoth­er point man for the Trump legal team, called for a nation­al secu­ri­ty investigation.

“It was used to cheat in elec­tions in South Amer­i­ca,” he said. “I can’t imag­ine you would [use] that unless you were out of your mind.”

The sus­pi­cions stem from the dis­cov­ery on elec­tion night that Domin­ion bal­lot scan­ners and soft­ware switched 6,000 votes from Mr. Trump to Mr. Biden in Antrim Coun­ty, Michi­gan. The mix-up was caught and cor­rect­ed, and the cor­rec­tion is reflect­ed in Mr. Biden’s 150,000-vote lead in Michigan’s tally.

Spec­u­la­tion of wide­spread vote switch­ing ensued because Domin­ion Vot­ing Sys­tems pro­vides vot­ing tech­nol­o­gy to more than two dozen states. The com­pa­ny claims on its web­site to ser­vice 40% of America’s voters.

Claims that the company’s tech­nol­o­gy could have been manip­u­lat­ed adds to the dra­ma of Mr. Trump’s elec­tion chal­lenges, which includes a bar­rage of state and fed­er­al law­suits to reverse Mr. Biden’s pro­ject­ed win.

“Rigged elec­tion. We will win,” Mr. Trump tweet­ed Sun­day in all cap­i­tal letters.

The left-lean­ing main­stream media out­lets dis­miss con­cerns about Domin­ion vot­ing machines as a con­spir­a­cy theory.

The Asso­ci­at­ed Press report­ed in a “fact check” that there was no evi­dence to sup­port Mr. Trump’s claims that elec­tion tech­nol­o­gy delet­ed large num­bers of votes for him.

“I nev­er say any­thing I can’t prove,” Ms. Pow­ell said.

Domin­ion said alle­ga­tions that its machines con­tributed to elec­tion fraud are “100% false.”https://f9cffca461608e09d03079906283423d.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1 – 0‑37/html/container.html

“Domin­ion Vot­ing Sys­tems cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly denies false asser­tions about vote switch­ing issues with our vot­ing sys­tems,” the com­pa­ny said in a state­ment post­ed on its website.

The web­site linked to a report by the Home­land Secu­ri­ty Department’s cyber­se­cu­ri­ty and infra­struc­ture secu­ri­ty agency report vouch­ing for the integri­ty of the Nov. 3 election.

“The sys­tems and process­es used by elec­tion offi­cials to tab­u­late votes and cer­ti­fy offi­cial results are pro­tect­ed by var­i­ous safe­guards that help ensure the accu­ra­cy of elec­tion results. These safe­guards include mea­sures that help ensure tab­u­la­tion sys­tems func­tion as intend­ed, pro­tect against mali­cious soft­ware, and enable the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and cor­rec­tion of any irreg­u­lar­i­ties,” the secu­ri­ty agency’s report said.

Repub­li­can offi­cials raised alarm when a Domin­ion bal­lot-scan­ning machine in the Repub­li­can strong­hold of Antrim Coun­ty report­ed unof­fi­cial results show­ing Mr. Biden beat Mr. Trump by about 3,000 votes.

Elec­tion offi­cials then dis­cov­ered the bal­lot scan­ner and report­ing soft­ware had been mis­con­fig­ured and gave votes for Mr. Trump to Mr. Biden. After fix­ing the mis­take, Mr. Trump won the coun­ty by rough­ly 2,500 votes.

Michi­gan offi­cials blamed the mix-up on human error.

Crit­ics con­tend that vot­ing machines that are vul­ner­a­ble to acci­den­tal vote-switch­ing could be manip­u­lat­ed by bad actors.https://f9cffca461608e09d03079906283423d.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1 – 0‑37/html/container.html

It’s not only Trump sup­port­ers mak­ing accu­sa­tions of poten­tial bal­lot tam­per­ing through Dominion’s machines and software.

Geor­gia poll watch­er Gar­land Favorito, a co-founder of the elec­tion integri­ty group Vote GA, iden­ti­fied sus­pi­cious bal­lot counts in a sworn affi­davit filed to the Geor­gia sec­re­tary of state.

“I con­clud­ed from look­ing at these results that this was an irreg­u­lar­i­ty, since there was no obvi­ous rea­son for Pres­i­dent Trump’s totals to have decreased while for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Biden’s totals increased dra­mat­i­cal­ly,” he said in the affidavit.

He wit­nessed an unex­plained 20,000-vote increase for Mr. Biden and a 1,000-vote decrease for Mr. Trump.

Mr. Favorito, who said he is nei­ther a Repub­li­can nor a Trump sup­port­er, said the “arti­fi­cial­ly inflat­ed” votes for Mr. Biden emanat­ed from the same Domin­ion soft­ware used in Michigan.

“The soft­ware appears to have thrown votes from Trump to Biden here too,” he told Real Clear Inves­ti­ga­tions. “Or Biden bal­lots were manufactured.”

A recount is under­way in Georgia.

Last year, Sen. Eliz­a­beth War­ren of Mass­a­chu­setts led three oth­er Demo­c­ra­t­ic law­mak­ers in warn­ing that Domin­ion Vot­ing Sys­tems and two oth­er vot­ing tech­nol­o­gy firms were “trou­ble-plagued” and “prone to secu­ri­ty problems.”

The let­ters demand­ing answers from the com­pa­nies were also signed by Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Min­neso­ta and Ron Wyden of Ore­gon and Rep. Mark Pocan of Wisconsin.

Dominion’s cor­po­rate ori­gins trace back to Smart­mat­ic, a vot­ing tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny estab­lished in 2000 that had ties to Chavez.

Smart­mat­ic was found­ed by three Venezue­lan engi­neers and incor­po­rat­ed in Delaware with head­quar­ters in Boca Raton, Flori­da. By 2004, the com­pa­ny had vast­ly expand­ed and bought Biz­ta, an elec­tron­ic vot­ing com­pa­ny in which Smart­mat­ic and the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment both owned large stakes.

In 2005, Smart­mat­ic bought Sequoia, one of the top U.S. com­pa­nies pro­duc­ing auto­mat­ed vot­ing sys­tems.

U.S. offi­cials began to take notice.

Rep. Car­olyn Mal­oney, New York Demo­c­rat, wrote in May 2006 to Trea­sury Sec­re­tary John W. Snow demand­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion of Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment influ­ence in U.S. vot­ing systems.

“As you can imag­ine, hav­ing a for­eign gov­ern­ment invest in or buy a com­pa­ny that ser­vices U.S. elec­tions could raise con­cerns about the integri­ty of the elec­tions con­duct­ed by these machines,” she wrote.

Sub­se­quent scruti­ny of Sequoia vot­ing and opti­cal scan machines, which basi­cal­ly were rebrand­ed Smart­mat­ic sys­tems, found tab­u­la­tion errors sim­i­lar to those of dis­put­ed elec­tions under Chavez in Venezuela.

While under review by the Com­mit­tee on For­eign Invest­ment in the U.S., Smart­mat­ic in 2006 sold Sequoia to Bain Cap­i­tal, the cor­po­rate raider firm with ties to Sen. Mitt Rom­ney, Utah Republican.

In 2010, Sequoia was pur­chased by Domin­ion, at the time a lit­tle-known Cana­di­an com­pa­ny that man­u­fac­tured vot­ing machines.

Source: wash​ing​ton​times​.com By Alex Swoy­er and S.A. Miller