SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Dominion Voting Systems, the election technology company that's at the heart of countless conspiracy theories after the 2020 election, has been sold. Dominion machines are used in more than half the states, and the company's buyer seems to be leaning into some of President Trump's language about voting. NPR's voting correspondent, Miles Parks, joins us in our studios. Miles, thanks so much for being with us.
MILES PARKS, BYLINE: Hey, Scott. Thanks for having me.
SIMON: Dominion became what amounts to a household name after the 2020 elections. Remind us why.
PARKS: Well, if you think back to November 2020, the Trump campaign, influential people on the right, were really throwing spaghetti at the wall, trying to find a conspiracy theory to stick about why President Trump did not win that election. You know, Italian satellites, late-night ballot dumps, and Dominion really got pulled into that. Here's former Trump attorney Sidney Powell talking a little bit after the election on Fox Business.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "FOX BUSINESS")
SIDNEY POWELL: I can hardly wait to put forth all the evidence we have collected on Dominion, starting with the fact it was created to produce altered voting results in Venezuela for Hugo Chavez.
PARKS: So you get a taste a little bit of the kind of accusations that were being made about the company, even though none of them were ever proven true. Fox News ended up settling a defamation lawsuit with the company for close to $800 million, and the far-right outlet Newsmax also settled a similar lawsuit for more than $60 million.
SIMON: Now, I imagine none of that can be good for business. Is that why the company's been sold?
PARKS: Well, we haven't heard from Dominion about the sale, but I can say the rumors have not completely died and have clearly impacted the business. You know, in 2023, a Republican-leaning county in California actually voted to get rid of their Dominion counting machines in favor of hand-counting ballots, even though it was estimated to triple their costs. And even this year, officials with Trump's Justice Department reached out to local clerks in Missouri wanting to access their Dominion machines. We aren't really sure exactly why, but it is clear that there is still a lot of skepticism about this company among people who deny the 2020 results.
SIMON: And, of course, that could be a big task for the buyer of Dominion, which is who? And why are they buying?
PARKS: Right. So it's someone who wants to - who already owns a voting equipment company and wants to expand. Scott Leiendecker is his name, and he's been working in elections for decades, first as an official. He was the Republican elections director in St. Louis. And then in 2011, he started a company called KNOWiNK that has become the nation's largest vendor for voting check-in equipment. To acquire Dominion, Leiendecker started a new company called Liberty Vote, and where it gets really interesting is how much he seems to be leaning into the right's election integrity language.
SIMON: Did the Liberty Vote detail how they plan to change Dominion?
PARKS: So it's still a little bit unclear, but there is definitely a rebrand going on. The announcement explicitly said that they would only use domestic staffing and software development, which seemed to nod to the conspiracy theorizing about Venezuela that we heard a little bit of before. And the announcement also said it would prioritize complying with President Trump's March executive order on voting.
But just to be clear, it's not like the Dominion machines are just going away. You know, government contracts are already in place and, in many case, for many years down the road. So counties that have these vote tabulators are probably still going to use them in elections in 2026. It will be interesting to watch then how the election integrity activists - the most ardent ones on the right - take this news, considering it's just, at this point, a change in ownership.
SIMON: NPR's Miles Parks. Thanks for joining us this morning.
PARKS: Thanks, Scott. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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