On October 9, 2025, the Associated Press confirmed what election administrators had been whispering about: Dominion Voting Systems—the same company dragged through the mud with lies about 2020—has been sold. The buyer? Liberty Vote, a newly formed company led by Scott Leiendecker, a former Republican election official and founder of pollbook vendor KNOWiNK. The purchase price remains undisclosed.
This should have been a dry business story about vendor churn. Instead, it lands like a thunderclap in a political climate where the GOP is openly flirting with authoritarianism, Trump is federalizing National Guard units into cities, and the very mechanics of democratic elections are being turned into partisan weapons.
The question isn’t whether Dominion’s machines were accurate—they were, proven repeatedly by audits and courts. The question is: can a voting machine company run by a Republican insider be trusted when the same party is actively undermining the legitimacy of elections?
Dominion’s Journey Through the Conspiracy Grinder
Dominion wasn’t perfect, but it was innocent. Innocent of the monstrous lies spun around it after 2020. Those lies fueled harassment campaigns, death threats, and a flood of lawsuits. Dominion fought back, and it fought hard:
- April 18, 2023: Fox News agreed to pay Dominion $787.5 million to settle defamation claims.
- August 18, 2025: Newsmax shelled out $67 million to close its own liability.
- 2024–2025: Quiet deals with Rudy Giuliani and other pro-Trump figures, some sealed in confidentiality, shut down still more defamation suits.
- Still pending: lawsuits against conspiracy entrepreneurs like Mike Lindell.
Dominion proved its machines worked. But legal victories didn’t erase the political stain. And now, just as the last big settlements were announced, its private equity owner Staple Street Capital bailed. They took the money and ran.
And into that vacuum stepped Scott Leiendecker. A Republican insider. A man who now controls the second-largest voting machine fleet in the United States.
Leiendecker’s Pedigree: Technocrat or Trojan Horse?
Scott Leiendecker’s résumé is tailor-made for plausible deniability. Former Republican elections director in St. Louis County. Entrepreneur behind KNOWiNK, a pollbook company that turned voter check-ins into a modernized process. He understands elections, no doubt. But he also understands power, contracts, and partisan opportunity.
His pitch with Liberty Vote sounds clean on paper:
- 100% U.S. ownership and engineering (translation: “Don’t worry, no Venezuelan ghosts in the servers this time”).
- Paper-backed systems (translation: “Yes, we’ve read your angry op-eds about hand-marked ballots”).
- Third-party audits and transparency (translation: “Please, trust us, we’ll hire consultants to say we’re fine”).
It’s a checklist designed to soothe, not to reform. And in an era when the GOP is openly weaponizing the Department of Justice and deploying the Guard into Democratic strongholds, the optics of a Republican insider controlling the very infrastructure of vote-counting isn’t comforting—it’s chilling.
Procurement Panic Meets Shutdown Dysfunction
The timing is dreadful. October 9 is smack in the middle of procurement cycles for 2026. Election administrators are already juggling:
- Federal shutdowns that furloughed 34,000 IRS workers and froze agency budgets.
- Certification bottlenecks at the EAC (Election Assistance Commission).
- State mandates for paper-trails, QR code debates, and evolving audit standards.
- Budget chaos from city councils and legislatures that don’t even know what they can pay for next year.
Now they must also ask: Do Dominion contracts transfer cleanly? Do warranties survive? Does Liberty Vote have the staff to maintain support help desks across thousands of counties?
Meanwhile, competitors like ES&S and Hart are licking their chops, pitching counties with “continuity, not chaos.”
Staple Street’s Exit: The Private Equity Shrug
Staple Street Capital’s decision to exit Dominion is a statement in itself. They made their money from the lawsuits, cashed in on settlements, and walked away from the political stigma. That’s private equity’s playbook: extract, profit, abandon.
The problem is that democracy is not a cash cow. When PE exits, someone fills the void. In this case, it’s Liberty Vote—a company that looks less like an investor and more like a political instrument wrapped in a corporate shell.
Red Flags Waving
Here’s why this should scare anyone who cares about democratic governance:
- Partisan Capture of Infrastructure: Leiendecker is not neutral. He has Republican ties and Republican capital. Elections should not depend on whether counties trust a partisan’s company.
- Optics of Fascism: At the same time Trump is erasing habeas corpus in press conferences and cheering immigration raids, his allies are consolidating control of the machines that count votes. Even if Liberty Vote is clean, the perception is corrosive.
- Vendor Churn Chaos: County clerks are being told to trust a new brand in the middle of a contracting cycle. That’s like replacing an airplane’s wings mid-flight.
- Certification Delays: State labs and EAC processes move slowly. A rebrand may force re-certifications, creating bottlenecks that could delay deployments in 2026.
- Disinformation Cycles: The very people who smeared Dominion in 2020 now get to boast that “the corrupt company was sold” and position Liberty Vote as the “patriotic alternative.” In other words: the liars win the narrative twice.
The Consequences: What’s Next
This isn’t just a business handoff. It’s a stress test for American democracy. Key questions loom:
- Contract continuity: Will Liberty Vote honor Dominion’s deals through 2026? Or will counties get forced into renegotiations during a shutdown?
- Security transparency: Will Liberty Vote publish independent audits, vulnerability disclosures, and proof of software integrity? Or will it hide behind proprietary claims?
- Certification handling: Will Liberty Vote successfully navigate the EAC and state labs for VVSG standards? Or will certification delays paralyze procurement?
- Advisory boards: Will bipartisan advisory boards and county user groups survive under new ownership? Or will they dissolve in partisan suspicion?
- Trust metrics: Will voters in skeptical counties actually feel reassured? Or will they see a GOP-led company as proof the fix is in?
Closing: Machines Aren’t the Problem—Power Is
Let’s be clear: Dominion’s machines worked. They worked in 2020. They worked in 2022. They worked in every audit since. The attacks were never about the technology. They were about power.
And now, after years of defamation suits proved the conspiracies false, the machines themselves are being rebranded under Republican leadership—at the very moment the GOP is normalizing paramilitary deployments, rewriting constitutional language, and prosecuting political opponents.
It doesn’t matter how many audits Liberty Vote promises. The trust deficit isn’t technological—it’s political. And by placing control of election infrastructure in the hands of a Republican insider, the United States has once again blurred the line between democracy and one-party capture.
Closing Section: “THE MACHINERY OF DOUBT”
The machinery was never broken. The ballots were counted, the numbers were right, and every audit proved it. What was broken was trust, shattered by a party that lied about machines and then walked away with settlements when they got sued.
Now that same party’s operatives own the machines.
Liberty Vote promises security, transparency, and paper trails. But until they prove otherwise, the sale looks less like democracy defended and more like democracy franchised—sold off to the very faction that tried to burn it down.
Because in 2025 America, the question isn’t whether your vote will be counted. The question is whether the people who count it believe in democracy at all.