Former GOP election official buys Dominion Voting Systems, says he’ll push for paper ballots

By Alayna Treene, Marshall Cohen, CNN

(CNN) — Dominion Voting Systems, the election vendor that was falsely accused of rigging the 2020 election, is being sold and rebranded as Liberty Vote effective immediately.

Scott Leiendecker, the founder of a Missouri-based election technology company who previously served as the Republican director for the St. Louis City Board of Elections, purchased the company this week for an undisclosed sum, according to a press release.

“As of today, Dominion is gone. Liberty Vote assumes full ownership and operational control,” the press release reads.

Leiendecker says he wants to use the renamed company to restore public confidence in the US electoral process. Liberty Now also vows to be bipartisan as it works to reshape Dominion’s image. Dominion’s election products were used by millions of US voters across 27 states last year.

Dominion’s founder and CEO, John Poulos, confirmed in a one-sentence statement provided to CNN on Thursday that, “Liberty Vote has acquired Dominion Voting Systems.”

The company’s new owner laid out four goals, many of which align with the Trump administration, that they argue will restore trust in US elections, the main being a heavy emphasis on using paper ballots.

“Liberty Vote is committed to delivering election technology that prioritizes paper-based transparency, security, and simplicity so that voters can be assured that every ballot is filled-in accurately and fairly counted,” Leiendecker says.

The sale of Dominion comes as President Donald Trump has repeatedly insisted he plans to overhaul America’s election systems, from wanting to move the US to all-paper ballots, require voter identification in all elections, and restrict mail-in voting. The president has promised to carry out those goals through executive orders, something he does not have explicit authority to do, as he seeks to change election laws that he has falsely blamed for his 2020 election loss.

Liberty Vote also plans on ensuring the company is “100% American owned,” including all domestic staffing and software development, the release states. Dominion was founded as a Canadian company with offices in Toronto, Denver, and Dallas. The new company plans to continue to have a presence in Canada, however, a source familiar with the plans said.

MAGA-friendly moves?

The press release from Liberty Vote references some buzzwords that have been championed by the pro-Trump “election integrity” community.

For instance, its emphasis on increasing the use of “hand-marked paper ballots” aligns with Trump’s longstanding push to move to 100% paper ballots. This talking point has perplexed election officials for years, because, as CNN has previously reported, more than 98% of American voters already live in jurisdictions that produce fully auditable paper trails.

The Liberty Vote announcement also says its actions will be in “compliance with President Trump’s executive order,” signed earlier this year, on election integrity. Parts of that order have already been blocked by a federal judge, and leading election experts have said the order is likely unconstitutional.

The new company says one of its other priorities will be to facilitate third-party auditing of their election systems. Right-wing “election integrity” activists have promoted outside audits, most famously in Arizona after 2020, as a way to hunt for supposed fraud. Nonpartisan studies have repeatedly found that voter fraud is extraordinarily rare in US elections — and most states already conduct internal post-election audits.

“This announcement raises a lot of questions, questions that I’m sure a lot of states with current Dominion contracts are going to want answers to,” said David Becker, an election industry expert who advises officials from both parties and runs the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research.

The company Leiendecker previously founded, KNOWiNK, is one of the “known and established companies” in the small voting technology industry, Becker said.

“They are primarily in the business of providing electronic poll books and voter database systems,” Becker said of KNOWiNK. “They’ve worked across the country, with red states, blue states, red counties and blue counties.”

The company is also being repped by the Logan Circle Group, which vows to fight for “America First” and conservative values. LCG Media’s website features several images of MAGA figures, such as President Trump and Vice President JD Vance, Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene former GOP congressman Matt Gaetz, among others.

Dominion’s post-2020 journey

Dominion was a little-known election vendor before 2020. But after Trump lost the election that year, the company found itself at the center of baseless conspiracy theories about voter fraud, peddled by Trump’s allies.

The baseless theory claimed Dominion voting machines used Venezuelan election-rigging software to flip millions of votes from Trump to Democratic nominee Joe Biden in battleground states, handing the election to Biden.

The theory was swiftly and thoroughly debunked. Still, it was repeatedly promoted by Trump, his 2020 campaign lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, outside allies like Mike Lindell, and supportive personalities at right-wing media outlets, like Fox News, Newsmax and One America News.

Dominion sued many of these outlets and figures for defamation in 2021.

Fox News famously paid Dominion more than $787 million in 2023 to end its case – the largest publicly known defamation settlement involving a media company in US history. Newsmax settled its case in August for $67 million.

In the past month, Dominion resolved its cases with OAN, Powell and Giuliani, with settlements that haven’t been made public. The company didn’t publicly explain why it decided to settle these cases in recent weeks.

As of Thursday, Dominion still has pending defamation lawsuits against Lindell and another notorious 2020 election denier, former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, who both deny wrongdoing.

CNN has reached out to Dominion’s lawyers for comment.

Before Thursday, Dominion’s largest investor was Staple Street Capital, a private equity fund. Staple Street thought Dominion was worth $80 million when it acquired the company in 2018, according to court filings, and it believed the company was valued at $225 million before the 2020 election.

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