Premier Election Solutions (inc 2002) used to be owned by Diebold (Safes) who got out of the elections business and sold the company for the value of the current inventory and intellectual property to ES&S in 2009. ES&S then sold that same package on to Dominion (inc 2002) in 2010.
Sequoia Election Systems (inc 1970) has had a very incestuous existence and by 2002 when they become relevant to our story they were basically just a company with contracts to fill for counties. They had fractured access to their previous product lines due to intellectual property being sold off. In 2002 they were purchased by De La Rue, a British printing and security company. Under De La Rue ownership they were run into the ground and sold to Smartmatic in 2005.
Smartmatic (inc 2000) was started by Venezuelan students. In 2004 they ran the election that put Hugo Chavez back in power for which they spent an indeterminate amount of time preparing and were compensated with roughly $91KK USD. This election was heavily scrutinized for being a likely fraud due to circumstance (it’s complicated).
In 2006 the City of San Francisco, while led by Mayor Gavin Newsom, put out a Request for Proposal for a new voting system. They received bids from ES&S and Seqouia Systems. After trials of the systems they decided to go with Seqouia who were the lowest bidder. Soon after their contract bid was accepted Seqouia became the subject of a review by the Federal Council on Foreign Involvement in the United States (CFIUS) due to their connections with Venezuela (Socialism).
This action is documented as being a response to machine technical issues having taken place in Chicago, another area that Seqouia serviced, where Venezuelan technicians were flown in to resolve glitches. The issues were blamed on machine operator lack of training, but US Representative Carolyn B Maloney (D-NY) reportedly requested the review of Seqouia as a result.
Seqouia/Smartmatic initially “voluntarily” submitted to a review by CFIUS but withdrew soon after, instead deciding to sell Seqouia to the United States citizens who were in the corporate leadership already. The general consensus is that they had ties to Venezuela they couldn’t hide.
Instead of divesting entirely from the United States Smartmatic transferred ownership of intellectual property including software for the machines from Seqouia to Smartmatic. This allowed Seqouia to pass the taste test that counties would administer and presumably federal palms were greased to bypass further scrutiny on that front.
Seqouia operations in the United States continued to expand with no further noted oversight by the federal government. Note that the software and hardware was still being developed by Smartmatic and licensed to Seqouia from what I have found, so I highly suspect bribery of federal officials took place repeatedly with the restructure appeasing the small portion of the public who were paying attention.
In 2010 Seqouia was sold to Dominion Voting Systems and in 2014 the company filed for bankruptcy in Colorado.
In 2012 Smartmatic moved its headquarters to London and in 2014 established a holding company there called SGO Corporation Limited (Holding Company) with the help of Lord Mark Malloch Brown (Soros) who is the CEO of SGO currently. This was likely an attempt to further obfuscate ownership of assets.
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The situation as it stands in 2014; SGO is conducting elections around the world, but probably not America, with Smartmatic hardware and software all of which is licensed by Seqouia from Smartmatic as well. There are many elections that are criticized for being manipulated, but Smartmatic avoids blame as the leaders who win are criticized instead of their machines (see: Philippines).
Dominion owns Premier Election Systems and Seqouia. It is conducting elections in the United States and continuing to expand.
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From 2016 - 2018 Smartmatic operations globally grew very quickly as they leveraged their connections to the UN/NGO through Lord Mark Malloch Brown (Soros) and implemented biometric based voting in many countries, expanding on their experience tweaking their hardware for Venezuela where they have continued to run election systems. Many of these expansions take place in Africa facilitated by the UN although they also ran an Armenian vote and various others while servicing existing contracts including continued concerns in the Philippines.
Also in 2016 Smartmatic leverages a relationship with Estonian Developers who built Estonia’s national online voting system (likely to obfuscate their involvement) to convince the Utah GOP to license their online voting system for a pilot program for the Utah Republican Presidential Primaries. No big fraud concerns raised by citizens because not many used the system and it cost a nominal $150K USD.
In 2017 Los Angeles County signed a $282 million contract with Smartmatic to create an election system. Los Angeles County wanted to own the system and all intellectual property associated outright, hence the large price tag, and had been searching since 2009 for developer.
In 2019 Dominion is selected as the statewide voting system provider for the state of Georgia (began providing services in 2020 for partisan primary).
In 2020 work is completed by Smartmatic on Los Angeles voting system that is publicly owned and it is used for partisan primaries then the presidential election.
Main takeaway. The whole industry is rigging elections, but Smartmatic/Dominion are not only the biggest providers of voting services in the US but likely the world. Exposing them in the United States will have a ripple effect into every other country that uses their systems.
Make the World Great Again by making elections secure. Great work pede.