Dominion Voting Systems
Updated: November 25, 2020
SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT: FACTS & RUMORS

DOMINION VOTING SYSTEMS CATEGORICALLY DENIES FALSE ASSERTIONS ABOUT VOTE SWITCHING AND SOFTWARE ISSUES WITH OUR VOTING SYSTEMS.

According to a Joint Statement by the federal government agency that oversees U.S. election security, the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA): "There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised."  The government & private sector councils that support this mission called the 2020 election "the most secure in American history."

1) DOMINION IS NOT SHUTTERING ITS OFFICES.  EMPLOYEES HAVE BEEN ENCOURAGED TO WORK REMOTELY AND PROTECT THEIR SOCIAL MEDIA PROFILES DUE TO PERSISTENT HARASSMENT AND THREATS AGAINST PERSONAL SAFETY.

Dominion employees are being forced to retreat from their lives due to personal safety concerns, not only for our employees themselves, but also for their extended families.

  • ABC News has reported on these security concerns, saying that after "two weeks of false fraud claims," this is the latest sign that "freewheeling online rhetoric has real-world consequences."
  • Dominion team members are working around the clock to address issues with law enforcement and take every measure we can to ensure the safety of our employees.
  • Dominion will not comment further about our personnel due to these safety concerns.

2) VOTE DELETION/SWITCHING ASSERTIONS ARE COMPLETELY FALSE.

An unsubstantiated claim about the deletion of 2.7 million pro-Trump votes that was posted on the Internet and spread on social media has been taken down and debunked by independent fact-checkers.

  • Edison Research (ER) has refuted any claims that company data suggests any voting irregularities, including vote switching.  Edison Research President Larry Rosin told The Dispatch Fact Check, "Edison Research created no such report and we are not aware of any voter fraud."
  • Claims that 941,000 votes for President Trump in Pennsylvania were deleted are impossible.  The fourteen counties using Dominion systems collectively produced 1.3 million votes, representing a voter turnout of 76%.  Fifty-two percent of those votes went to President Trump, amounting to 676,000 votes processed for the President in Pennsylvania using company systems.
  • The U.S. Department of Homeland Security's cybersecurity division has confirmed that it is not possible for a bad actor to change election results without detection.
  • Dominion doesn't even operate in some of the contested districts, including Philadelphia; Allegheny County, PA; Milwaukee; and Dane County.

3) DOMINION'S SYSTEMS ARE SECURE AND ARE CERTIFIED UNDER THE U.S. ELECTION ASSISTANCE COMMISSION (EAC).

All U.S. voting systems must provide assurance that they work accurately and reliably as intended under federal U.S. EAC and state certifications and testing requirements.  Dominion's voting systems are certified for the 2020 elections.

  • Servers that run Dominion software are located in local election offices, and data never leaves the control of local election officials.
  • Dominion does not have the ability to review votes in real-time as they are submitted.
  • Dominion software does not have the ability to fractionalize or weight a vote.
  • Dominion's tabulators do not have exposed USB or other memory ports.
  • Dominion software tabulates ballots.  It does not collect or store voter information.
  • Dominion is certified in 28 states.  While we disagree with Texas' decision to not certify our systems, we understand there are different standards in different states.  Sometimes it takes adjustments, for any company's systems, to meet a certain state's standard.

4) ASSERTIONS OF "SUPERCOMPUTER" ELECTION FRAUD CONSPIRACIES ARE 100% FALSE.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has debunked claims about the existence of a secret CIA program for vote fraud called Hammer and Scorecard.

  • All U.S. voting systems must provide assurance that they work accurately and reliably as intended under federal U.S. EAC and state certifications and testing requirements.  Election safeguards - from testing and certification of voting systems, to canvassing and auditing - prevent malicious actors from tampering with vote counts and ensure final vote tallies are accurate.  Read more from CISA.
  • There have been no "raids" of Dominion servers by the U.S. military or otherwise, and Dominion does not have servers in Germany.  CISA has refuted this claim on Twitter, and the U.S. Army has also confirmed to the Associated Press that it's false.

5) THERE WERE NO DOMINION SOFTWARE GLITCHES AND BALLOTS WERE ACCURATELY TABULATED.  THE RESULTS ARE 100% AUDITABLE.

No credible reports or evidence of any software issues exist.  Vote counts are conducted by county and state election officials, not by Dominion.  Our systems support tabulation by those officials alone.  Human errors related to reporting tabulated results have arisen in a few counties, including some using Dominion equipment, but appropriate procedural actions have been taken by the county to address these errors were made prior to the canvass process.

  • The Michigan Secretary of State's office offers a Fact Check Page which debunks false or erroneous claims about voting in Detroit, as well as a user-error incident in Antrim County.
  • The Georgia Secretary of State has also repeatedly stated throughout the count that "[a]s the work goes on, I want to assure Georgia voters that every legal vote was cast and accurately counted."
  • Dominion's systems are not responsible for 2,631 uncounted ballots discovered in Floyd County, Georgia during the statewide recount.  The Secretary of State's office has cited clerical error and lack of following proper procedures as the cause.
  • Votes are not processed outside the United States.  Votes are counted and reported by county and state election officials - not by Dominion, or any other election technology company.  Assertions that votes are counted in Germany are completely false, as has been fact-checked by the Associated Press.

6) DOMINION EMPLOYEES DO NOT HAVE ACCESS TO THE BALLOT ADJUDICATION SYSTEM, NOR DO THEY OPERATE IT.

The canvass process exists to allow election officials to validate and count ballots that were unable to be counted on Election Day because they needed additional adjudication.  Dominion employees do not have access to this adjudication system, nor do they operate it.

  • Access to any adjudication system resides with the election authority using it.  The system is controlled through secure and verifiable user accounts, and all the voter intent adjustments are securely logged in the system and then recorded in the digital image of the ballot.
  • All states require bipartisan/multi-person teams in order to adjudicate ballots in accordance with the law.

7) DOMINION IS A NONPARTISAN U.S. COMPANY BASED IN DENVER, CO.

Dominion has no company ownership relationships with the Pelosi family, Feinstein family, Clinton Global Initiative, Smartmatic, Scytl, or any ties to Venezuela or Cuba.  Dominion works with all U.S. political parties; our customer base and our government outreach practices reflect this nonpartisan approach.

  • The Associated Press has verified that Dominion has no ties to Venezuela.
  • As reported by the Associated Press, "Dominion made a one-time philanthropic commitment at a Clinton Global Initiative meeting in 2014, but the Clinton Foundation has no stake or involvement in Dominion's operations, the nonprofit confirmed."  The meeting included bipartisan attendees focused on international democracy-building.

8) DOMINION IS NOT, AND HAS NEVER BEEN, OWNED BY SMARTMATIC.

Dominion is an entirely separate company and a fierce competitor to Smartmatic.

  • Dominion and Smartmatic do not collaborate in any way and have no affiliate relationships or financial ties.
  • Dominion does not use Smartmatic software.
  • The only associations the companies have ever had were:
    - In 2009, Smartmatic licensed Dominion machines for use in the Philippines.  The contract ended in a lawsuit.
    - In 2010, Dominion purchased certain assets from Sequoia, a private U.S. Company.  Smartmatic, a previous owner of Sequoia, pursued legal actions against Dominion.
  • Dominion did not acquire Smartmatic and/or its software from Sequoia.

9) NO UNAUTHORIZED OR LAST-MINUTE SOFTWARE UPDATES OCCURRED.

Claims about software updates being done the night before Election Day are 100% false.  Our voting systems are designed and certified by the U.S. government to be closed and do not rely on network connectivity.

  • Both Spalding County and the Georgia Secretary of State have verified that a) this type of unauthorized update is impossible, and b) the actual logs from equipment under the custody of the County determined an update did NOT happen the night before the election.
  • Georgia Voting System Implementation Manager Gabe Sterling has affirmed in his daily press briefing on November 9 that "nothing was done to the [PollPad] system after [October 31]," when voter files were updated as part of normal procedure.

10) MISINFORMATION IS AN ATTACK ON OUR DOMINION CUSTOMERS: LOCAL ELECTION OFFICIALS AND SECRETARIES OF STATE.

Erroneous claims that precincts in Michigan had more votes recorded than actual voters point to an affidavit that has several glaring errors.  The counties cited are in Minnesota, not Michigan, and the affidavit's claims regarding over-votes are not verified with any data from previous Minnesota elections or the Secretary of State.  This claim has no basis in truth.

These dedicated public servants - not Dominion - run our elections and many have reaffirmed the integrity of the elections.  Recent statements from election officials include:

MICHIGAN

  • The Michigan Secretary of State's office debunked false claims about the election in the state, stating absentee ballot counting was transparent and accurate and that an isolated user error in Antrim County did not affect election results.
  • A spokesperson for the Michigan Secretary of State stated, "We have not seen any evidence of fraud or foul play in the actual administration of the election.  What we have seen is that it was smooth, transparent, secure and accurate."

GEORGIA

  • The Georgia Secretary of State stated upon completion of a statewide review of ballots on November 19, "Georgia's historic first statewide audit reaffirmed that the state's new secure paper ballot voting system accurately counted and reported results."

ARIZONA

  • The Chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors released a letter on November 17 noting, "The evidence overwhelmingly shows the system used in Maricopa County is accurate and provided voters with a reliable election... The Dominion tabulation equipment met mandatory requirements during logic and accuracy testing before the Presidential Preference Election, the Primary Election and the General Election.  And after each of these 2020 elections, the hand count audit showed the machines generated an accurate count."

11) THERE ARE NO ISSUES WITH THE USE OF SHARPIE PENS.

Election officials provide writing instruments that are approved for marking ballots to all in-person voters using hand-marked paper ballots.  Dominion Voting Systems machines can read all of these instruments, including Sharpies.

  • The DHS Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, "if a ballot has issues that impacts its ability to be scanned, it can be hand counted." The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors assured voters that "sharpies do not invalidate ballots." Dominion has stated that "Sharpie pens are safe and reliable to use on ballots, and recommended due to their quick-drying ink."

November 26, 2020

STATEMENT FROM DOMINION ON SIDNEY POWELL'S CHARGES

While Dominion Voting Systems is not named as a defendant, on Wednesday, November 25, 2020, Sidney Powell released what appears to be a very rough draft of a lawsuit against the Republican governor and secretary of state of Georgia alleging a bizarre election fraud conspiracy that—were it possible—would necessarily require the collaboration of thousands of participants, including state officeholders, bipartisan local elections officials, thousands of volunteer Election Day poll watchers in thousands of locations across the state of Georgia, federal and state government technology testing agencies, private elections service companies, and independent third-party auditors. This quite simply did not occur.

Dominion Voting Systems is the gold standard for transparent and accountable voting equipment. The allegations included in the draft complaint are baseless, senseless, physically impossible, and unsupported by any evidence whatsoever. We stand with the state and local elected officials and bipartisan election volunteers that this suit maliciously maligns.

In Powell's error-filled document, she repeats a number of baseless allegations about Dominion Voting Systems, which she has made in public since Election Day.

The allegations about DVS most relevant to the election outcome in Georgia are that votes tallied on a Dominion vote tabulator were somehow manipulated on a statewide basis to elevate the count in favor of the Democratic presidential candidate. It is important to understand that this is not possible—not on a machine-by-machine basis, not by alleged hacking, not by manipulating software, and not by imagined ways of "sending" votes to overseas locations.  But even if it were possible, it would have been discovered in the statewide handcount of votes.

Dominion's systems are secure as certified by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC). In fact, all voting systems must provide assurance that they work accurately and reliably as intended under federal U.S. EAC and state certification and testing requirements. Further, Dominion source code is verified and secure. Third-party test labs chosen by the bipartisan U.S. EAC and accredited by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) perform complete source code reviews on every tabulation system that is federally certified in the U.S.

Every vote from a Dominion device in Georgia is documented on an auditable paper trail and creates a verifiable paper ballot available for hand-counting. In fact, the Georgia handcounts, independent audits, and machine tests have all repeatedly affirmed that the machine counts were accurate.

In addition, Powell makes a number of allegations that go beyond Dominion's role in Georgia's elections—which is only to provide the ballot tabulation systems. For the record, again, Dominion does not develop voter-registration systems, poll-books, signature verification software, or provide vote-by-mail printing. These parts of the voting process are instead supported by other companies and controlled by the state and local officials who run elections in hundreds of thousands of voting places across the country.

These assertions in the Powell filing are non-sensical and unsupported by any presentation of evidence. However, to respond to some of her specific assertions about Dominion:
  • Dominion was not "founded by oligarchs and dictators." It was founded in Toronto, Canada, and it is now a proud nonpartisan American company. Dominion has attested to its ownership—under penalty of perjury—to local, state, and federal agencies, including the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which includes all U.S. national security agencies.
  • Dominion is not, and never has been, owned by Smartmatic. Neither has Smartmatic ever been a subsidiary of Dominion, as the complaint asserts. Dominion is an entirely separate company—they do not collaborate in any way and have no affiliate relationships or financial ties. Dominion does not use Smartmatic. These are all facts verifiable in the public record as well as in regulatory and legal filings.
  • Dominion has no ties to the Venezuelan government, nor any other foreign government, including China and Iran. Dominion has never participated in any elections in Venezuela and has no connection or relationship with the now deceased former Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. Other companies have serviced elections in Venezuela, but Dominion is not one of them.
  • Dominion does not have operations in Germany including an "Office of the General Counsel."
  • Dominion Voting Systems are in fact auditable—and are audited and tested regularly by multiple government agencies and independent third parties. All electronic devices used in the U.S. must be designed to be audited.
  • Dominion's system does in fact include a paper ballot backup to verify results. In fact, thousands of elections officials in Georgia just completed the largest vote recount in American history using the paper ballots produced by Dominion devices.
  • Dominion's system cannot be manipulated by a technician in the way Powell alleges. This has been confirmed by the government agencies that have certified Dominion equipment.
  • Despite repeated counts and audits, there is no evidence of any kind that any voting system deleted, lost, or changed votes in Georgia, or in any of the other 28 states that use Dominion devices. Certifications and audits have instead shown the accuracy, transparency, and reliability of Dominion's systems.
  • The federal government agency that oversees U.S. election security verified that there is no evidence that this election was in any way compromised. In fact, they have called it the most secure election in American history.
  • Servers that run Dominion software are located in local election offices, and data never leaves the control of local election officials.
  • There were no "glitches" with Dominion's voting systems, and no unauthorized or last-minute software updates occurred.
  • There were no "data breaches" of Dominion software by anyone, let alone rogue foreign actors.
  • Human errors did occur in some counties but were resolved quickly by county officials before the canvass process.
  • Votes are not processed outside the United States. Votes are counted and reported by county and state election officials—not by Dominion, or any other election technology company.
  • Election safeguards—from testing and certification of voting systems to canvassing and auditing—prevent malicious actors from tampering with results.
Sidney Powell's wild and reckless allegations are not only demonstrably false, they have led to stalking, harassment, and death threats to Dominion employees. This criminal activity has been duly reported to the appropriate law enforcement agencies, and we intend to hold Ms. Powell, and those aiding and abetting her fraudulent actions, accountable for any harm that may occur as a result.