U.S. Embassy in Caracas believes Smartmatic has hidden owners tied to Chavez
A confidential US Embassy cable raises powerful questions about Smartmatic, alleging that its real ownership is hidden as it expands...
July 10, 2006
A confidential US Embassy cable raises powerful questions about Smartmatic, alleging that its real ownership is hidden as it expands...
1.- In which US election cycles subsequent to this report did the Carter Center and Baker Institute press state election authorities to carry out its four recommendations on security for voting systems?
2.- What did the Carter Center and Baker Institute do to hold election voting systems companies responsible for facilitating the security recommendations?
3.- What did the Center for Democracy and Election Management at the American University, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Ford Foundation, the John S. and James L Knight Foundation, the Omidyar Foundation, and the Pew Charitable Trusts do to press state election authorities and voting system companies to execute the security recommendations?
4.- Why did the Carter Center, the Baker Institute of Rice University, and the Center for Democracy and Election Management at the American University remove this important report from their websites?
2.- What are the names of the factories and companies inside China that manufactured the Smartmatic equipment?
3.- What are their associations with the Chinese Communist Party, the People's Liberation Army, and the Ministry of State Security?
4.- Have any of those companies been flagged by the United States as security risks?
2.- How does Mugica's acknowledgement that it was still involved with the Chavez regime, in December 2005, square with Smartmatic's denials of connections with the Venezuelan government?
3.- Why would Mugica renege on his agreement to loan a Chinese-made Smartmatic voting machine to the American Embassy for examination?
2.- Have Smartmatic/Sequoia acknowledged that their Edge2Plus and HAAT, have been shown elsewhere to be threats to the integrity of American elections?
3.- Are the companies' voting systems truly "stand-alone" and "not accessible... through external ports"?
4.- When the source code was escrowed, was it also audited by, or on behalf of, the jurisdictions using the system?
5.- Why do Smartmatic/Sequoia say that the "source code" has been "tested," but do not say that the source code has been credibly "audited"?
2.- Have any auditors of Smartmatic software been involved in conflicts of interests or scandals concerning the products and processes that they audit?
2.- Do the companies appear confident that they will survive a full CFIUS review?
2.- Why did Smartmatic/Sequoia word the question as follows, so that the company wouldn't have to answer either way: "Weren't there allegations of vote tampering and other controversies involving Smartmatic during Venezuela's recent Presidential Recall Referendum?"
3.- Why didn't it structure the question in terms of truth of falsehood, so it could issue a clear denial of involvement in any fraud?
4.- Why did Smartmatic rely on Venezuela's National Electoral Commission to attest to the "accuracy & integrity of voting systems," without informing the reader that the Commission at the time was a Chavez-controlled entity that paid Smartmatic, Bizta, and the phone company to do the work?
5.- The elections were widely regarded as fraudulent despite the Carter Center's statement. Did the Carter Center have anyone on the ground with the knowledge, expertise, independence, and time to audit the Smartmatic-Bizta systems?
6.- What did the Carter-Baker Commission warn the year before about the integrity of electronic voting systems?
2.- Why did the Board of Elections accept the story that the Venezuelan government's 28% stake was as collateral for "a $200,000 loan from the Venezuelan government," and not investigate the public reports that the Venezuelan government-owned 28% of Bizta's shares?
3.- Why did Smartmatic not indicate that Omar Montilla, a representative of the Venezuelan government was appointed as director of the board of directors of the voting software developer SAES, after acquiring 28% of the company's shares?
2.- If there were “many possible outcomes” to mitigating the Smartmatic purchase of Sequoia, why did Smartmatic divest itself of the profitable American company?
2.- Why did Smartmatic suddenly collapse its growing business by selling Sequoia before the CFIUS investigation was complete?
3.- Is there something about undeclared owners of Smartmatic whose existence the company did not want CFIUS to discover?
4.- How did Smartmatic's sale of Sequoia to "end" the CFIUS review provide confidence to American voters that the company and its software is not controlled by a foreign regime?
5.- Why did Smartmatic suddenly collapse its growing business by selling Sequoia before the CFIUS investigation was complete?
6.- What did Smartmatic do to ensure its Venezuela-commissioned source code remained in the Sequoia machines?
2.- Has CISA verified that those problems detected by California in 2007 were subsequently addressed?
3.- The Sequoia system findings are unequivocal and absolute, calling “every software system” severely problematic. Do these findings suggest that the systems were designed to have those weaknesses?
4.- What did the findings mean about “four pervasive structural weaknesses” that would benefit “an attacker seeking to alter election results”?
2.- How does that source code relate to Smartmatic?
3.- What did the Sequoia Source Code Review Team mean when finding the software mechanisms “lack reliable measures to detect or prevent tampering”?
4.- What could those “potentially serious consequences” be that would include “alteration of recorded vote, adding false results,” and damaging the election management system?
5.- When were the problematic source code, software, and hardware re-submitted for independent audit and certification?
6.- Did California maintain those 2007 standards for independent audit and certification?
7.- If not, who removed those standards and why?
8.- What could those “potentially serious consequences” be that would include “alteration of recorded vote, adding false results,” and damaging the election management system?
1.- What did Dominion mean by saying it “acquired all the assets of Sequoia Voting Systems,” including “software”?
2.- Did Dominion acquire rights to the Smartmatic source code and software?
3.- Did Dominion acquire distribution or leasing rights to the Smartmatic source code and software, and if so, why did it not specify those rights as a separate acquisition?
4.- What does this mean for subsequent Dominion electronic voting products and services?
5.- Does this mean that Dominion's systems contain embedded software or source code of Venezuelan origin?
6.- Why did Dominion specify the technologies acquired from Sequoia, yet not mention that they were from Smartmatic?
1.- What does Dominion mean here when it says it “has acquired Sequoia’s inventory and all intellectual property, including software, firmware and hardware, for Sequoia’s precinct and central count optical scan and DRE voting solutions, including BPS, WinEDS, Edge, Edge2, Advantage, insight, InsightPlus and 400C systems.”
2.- Aren’t those Smartmatic technologies?
3.- Who actually owns those technologies?
4.- Does Smartmatic still have access to them in American-based voting machines?
5.- How do Dominion, Sequoia, and Smartmatic clarify discrepancies in this Dominion statement?
6.- Is any of this the “malicious” software that Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney saw as a danger to national security, and for which she sought a CFIUS review?
1.- Is the Huffington Post accurate in saying that Dominion “lies about Chavez ties”?
2.- If there remain ties to the Venezuelan regime, what does it mean for the country when the Huffington Post that Dominion “may now, virtually overnight, have become the dominant private e-voting machine company in this country”?
3.- Why did Dominion not sue the Huffington Post for saying that Dominion’s denial about ties to Caracas “is an outright lie”?
4.- What might have been uncovered in discovery back in 2010?
1.- What does Malloch-Brown mean by saying that Smartmatic licenses software from Dominion, when it is widely understood to be the other way around?
2.- Why is Malloch-Brown so loquacious in the interview about everything except the nature of the Smartmatic-Dominion software license?
3.- Why does Malloch-Brown limit Venezuelan regime ownership to Hugo Chavez, but not exclude the possibility that other regime figures might own shares in Smartmatic?
4.- What does Malloch-Brown mean by "our" technology if Smartmatic sold Dominion six years earlier?
5.- Is Malloch-Brown aware of the Smartmatic executives' alleged bribery of the head of the Philippine election commission?
1.- Has there been any improvement in guaranteeing the integrity of the election vendor supply chain since the Brennan Center's 2019 report?
2.- If so, what are those improvements, and which authorities and independent institutions have done it?
1.- How does the Smartmatic USA executive's position on the Biden-Harris transition team support the idea that Smartmatic has no political connections?
2.- What does it say about Smartmatic's political impartiality in American elections?
3.- Is it significant that Smartmatic USA's chairman is on the transition review board of the very Department of Homeland Security that, through CISA and other agencies, has responsibility to protect the American electoral system from foreign influence and manipulation?
2.- Why did Smartmatic omit any reference to the Venezuelan regime's previous stake of 28% of the company that developed Smartmatic's software?
3.- Is Mugica accurate in saying that Smartmatic "sought out a CFIUS review" in late October as the company's own initiative, or was it in response to news stories and pressure from Congress, and to a CFIUS investigation that had already begun?
4.- Are Smartmatic/Sequoia really the most secure voting solutions?
5.- Are Smartmatic/Sequoia really the most auditable voting solutions?
1.- Why haven't independent groups sponsored white-hat hackers and computer engineers like Harri Hursti to examine the vulnerabilities of Smartmatic, Dominion, and all other electronic voting systems?
2.- How did reckless accusations about electoral fraud and manipulation damage attempts to determine the real problems and solve them?
3.- What did these reckless claims do inadvertently to cause others to dismiss legitimate concerns as baseless conspiracies, and allow the problem to continue?
1.- Why, after partnering with Smartmatic, does CISA oppose the release of the voting machine report?
2.- Does CISA appear Dominion as a good-willed vendor who will honestly "work out" the problems with computer experts?
3.- Might this have anything to do with the Smartmatic USA's CEO being on the Biden-Harris Department of Homeland Security transition team that governs the leadership of CISA?
1.- What lessons can we learn from concerns about TikTok source code, and how can we apply them to electronic voting systems source code?
2.- If "TikTok's source code is riddled with backdoors," why wouldn't we expect for a Venenzuelan-origin election source code to be designed with undetectable backdoors?
3.- What other parallels can we draw between TikTok and foreign-sourced electronic voting systems software?
1.- Why would the very politicized Reid Hoffman and Smartmatic team up on defamation suits against Smartmatic critics?
2.- The terms of Hoffman's investment in Smartmatic, as with all large Smartmatic transactions, remain hidden. What financial interest does Hoffman have in defending Smartmatic? Was it in the form of ownership of shares, or of "investing" in the company's litigation?
3.- If Smartmatic was built to "seize" the American electoral market, is Hoffman trying to build up the company to dominate American electronic voting systems, either directly or by leasing its technology?
4.- Is there a political interest to protect Smartmatic's unique software capabilities?
1.- When has Senator Warnock called for independent audits of Dominion systems, including the source code and software, in Georgia elections?
2.- What has Senator Warnock said about the security and integrity of electronic voting systems used in the state of Georgia?
3.- Why would a sitting U.S. senator, elected in a controversial 2020 vote, be distraught about a hand-counted verification of Dominion voting machine tallies in his state?
4.- How would a hand-counted verification of Dominion voting machine tallies in each Georgia precinct “turn democracy on its head”?
1.- Why do election officials tend to trust and not verify the integrity of electronic voting systems?
2.- Harri Hursti again says, "Once you get access to the system, you can change anything you want." Why does the US intelligence community assess publicly that foreign regimes are not taking advantage of those known vulnerabilities to manipulate the elections?
3.- Hursti says, "This is not a technological program. This is a political and legal problem." How would one assess this in the context of the American political and legal systems?
4.- Hursti takes a transparent, crowdsourced approach to finding problems and solving them: "We have to expose the problems so we can develop a mitigation strategy." What are the upsides and downsides of this approach in the interests of American citizen voters?
1.- What was the purpose of Smartmatic opening offices in the United States?
2.- Is there a possibility that Smartmatic’s software was custom-made to suit the interests of a particular individual, group, network, or special interests in the United States?
3.- Smartmatic figures have said they created the company in response to the “hanging chads” issue in the 2000 George W. Bush vs Al Gore election, but the company was founded in April, six months before the November election. How does Smartmatic address this inconsistency?
1.- Did Bizta Corp. of Delaware and Smartmatic not only share the same founders but also the same fiscal domicile in the United States?
2.- Was Alfredo Anzola one of the original creators of Software Softer systems in Venezuela, later named Bizta R&D (of Caracas) along with Antonio Mugica, Jr., and his childhood friend?
3.- Does the announced structure of this deal appear to be a way for the Smartmatic corporation to avoid CFIUS review, while ensuring that its software remains in the “100 percent American” Sequoia systems?
4.- Does the announced structure of this deal appear to be a way for the Smartmatic corporation to avoid CFIUS review, while ensuring that its software remains in the “100 percent American” Sequoia systems?
1.- Were these transactions giving the Venezuelan regime indirect or hidden control of the Bizta Corporation, an American company?
2.- If so, were these in violation of American law at the time?
3.- What are the dangers of hostile foreign regimes having hidden control of American companies, even small ones?
1.- Was Jorge Rodriguez one of Venezuelan government members later sanctioned by The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) regarding Venezuelan electoral fraud, illicit wealth, and other crimes?
2.- Which other voting system companies participated in the bidding to provide electronic voting services in Venezuela when Rodriguez was the National Electoral Council chief?
3.- Was Smartmatic hand-picked by the government, without a comparative analysis within transparent and fair bidding and procurement processes, by Venezuela’s electoral laws?
4.- If so, what kind of hidden agenda or corruption might have been involved?
1.- Who are the real owners of Dominion Voting Systems?
2.- What is the motivation and background of the founders for the creation of the company?
1.- What did Richard Brand find in his investigation on Smartmatic, to conclude that the company had the ability to use its technology to assure a preexisting set of results?
2.- Why did NYU law experts limit themselves to simply praising Richard Brand's investigative skills and give so little importance to the findings he made, which expose the Venezuelan government's moves to assure preexisting election results through electronic voting machines?
3.- Were Brand's findings not serious enough to denounce and demand the investigation of a potential electoral crime in a supposedly democratic country?
4.- Wouldn't it be even more alarming and urgent now, a thorough investigation into this case, given the possible links of Sequoia / Smartmatic with the Venezuelan government as denounced by Congresswoman Maloney and especially Smartmatic being the company which provides electoral systems to Chavismo?
5.- Isn't it serious enough now that it also represents a potential threat to the Electoral Process and to the National Security of the United States?
1.- Why did the Venezuelan government select a company with no track record and no business for the creation of the electoral system?
2.- Why would the Venezuelan government be the largest shareholder of such a tiny company unless it had a compelling interest in determining its direction?
1.- Why did the Venezuelan government award such a valuable contract to a minuscule emerging company with no experience in elections?
2.- Was it due to the Venezuelan regime’s ability to control the development of the software and manipulate the outcomes?
3.- Does this mark the start of building one-party regimes through electronic manipulation of democratic processes?
1.- Credible concerns about electronic “manipulation” of Smartmatic systems are now more than 20 years old. Have these concerns been adequately addressed in the United States since that time?
2.- Who were the main figures in the United States who responded to the Herald’s Smartmatic investigations? What became of their concerns and actions? Why have they lost interest?
3.- The Miami Herald broke this important story. Why has the Herald’s publisher been reluctant to follow up 20 years later?
4.- If Smartmatic Software was developed for the Venezuelan goverment of Hugo Chávez to keep him in power by fraudulent means, is there any guarantee that the Smartmatic software was not tailor-made to suit the interest of the Venezuelan regime and its allies and sponsors?
5.- Has any widely recognized, neutral company or institution independently audited the Smartmatic software and source code?
1.- What actions were taken by U.S. authorities including Congresswoman Maloney herself, after she raised her concerns about the integrity of U.S. elections and national security potential threat?
2.- Does this risk of vulnerability of electronic voting machines used in U.S elections still exist today?
3.- Could the U.S. election results be tampered nowadays?
4.- Is this still a real risk or threat to national security as alerted by Congresswoman Maloney?
1.- What does the Venezuelan government's Code of Ethics say about the participation of its officials in private investments or being directors of private companies that may represent a conflict of interest in the exercise of power?
2.- Why the government Venezuela’s official and company Bizta’s board member, refuses to answer Herald's queries?
3.- Was Omar's mission in joining Bizta's board of directors to influence and secure the $91 million contract for Bizta and its partners Smartmatic to develop Venezuela's voting system?
4.- Why did the board of directors of Bizta give up the position held by Antonio Mugica's father so that Omar Montilla, representative of the government, could take control of the board of directors of the software developer “SAES”?
1.- Is it ethical for a regime to own such a large percentage of an international electoral systems company?
2.- Jorge Rodriguez (CNE), Omar Montilla (FONCREI), director of Bizta, the purchase of shares and the contracts given to Smartmatic - Bizta, would allow to dictate the rules of the game in favour of the Venezuelan regime?
3.- What was the arrangement between the Venezuelan government and other Bizta shareholders?
4.- How did the other shareholders of Bizta Corp. guarantee they would be able to run fair elections through their voting software, being the Venezuelan government itself the largest shareholder and having substantial power to make decisions?
1.- With all the changing names, secrecy agreements, and offshore shell companies, can we be satisfied that we know the identities of the true owners of Smartmatic?
1.- With the benefit of hindsight, how would you put Congresswoman Maloney's concerns into perspective?
2.- Did the Rep. Maloney receive response to its request to investigate Smartmatic and its acquisition of Sequoia?
3.- Was Sequoia’s acquisition by Smartmatic supervised and approved by the Department of Treasury?
4.-Were Smartmatic's foreign roots and more specifically its link with the Venezuelan government verified?
5.- What was the result of CFIUS investigation requested by Rep. Maloney? Were those results made public?
6.- Which Authority responsible for either the U.S. Electoral System, U.S. National Security or both, ensured that the risks exposed by Rep. Maloney were eradicated?
1.- The repurchase of the shares by Bizta is a first step to avoid leaving evidence of the Venezuelan regime's relationship and intervention with Smartmatic and Bizta, companies that have the same management structure?
2.- Could one reasonably presume that these actions were a way of attempting to hide the company's and executives' relations with the Chavez government, given the hailstorm of criticism from independent election experts and the Venezuelan democratic opposition?
3.- Are they trying to mask the government's obvious role of power over Bizta's decisions?
1.- Was the 2004 referendum really transparent?
2.- Did Smartmatic arise from Chavez's need to stay in power using a democratic process, to cause doubts about critics of the process and of the regime, and make the voters participants in their own destruction?
1.- Why were people like the Chicago alderman, Edward Burke and the congresswoman, Carolyn Maloney, unable to get real answers to their questions?
2.- Why did they stop asking about these irregularities, regarding the company's links with the Venezuelan government?
1.- Is this the first attempt by Sequoia and Smartmatic personnel in the United States to manipulate the truth by discrediting reasonable doubt?
2.- What are the three Curacao shell corporations linked to the Venezuelan dictator, mentioned by the Alderman Edward Burke and what is the link of these shell corporations with Sequoia / Smartmatic?
3.- Did The Chicago Tribune or anyone question the Sequoia’s CEO about these shell corporations and its link with Sequoia or Smartmatic? And if so, what was his response?
4.- Are the concerns raised by the Alderman Burke about a potential subversion of the electoral process in the United States really “crackpot theories”? Are they?
1.- Is it ethical for election officials to use software that cannot be audited by independent and trusted third parties?
2.- The statements issued to observers confirm that the electoral software belongs to the Venezuelan regime and cannot be marketed by third parties?
3.- Why smartmatic markets and delivers updates of software owned by the Venezuelan regime?
1.- Does it mean Sequoia still uses the same Smartmatic software that the State of California found to be riddled with significant security vulnerabilities and ended up being de-certified?
2.- Is Sequoia admitting that Venezuela-commissioned Smartmatic software would continue to be used in its machines for American elections?
1.- In addition to the potential national security risk involved in the use of a voting software company allegedly with ties to the Venezuelan goverment, such software was de-certified by the State of California due to its security weaknesses and for not complying with the standards. Why was that same software then used to run elections in 20% of the United States?
2.- Is Voter Action correct to say that “U.S. national security is potentially at risk because software used to count votes in 20% of the country during U.S. elections is owned and controlled by a Venezuelan-run company with ties to the Venezuelan government of Hugo Chávez”?
3.- Is Voter Action’s 2008 assessment still valid today – that “Foreign-owned and foreign-run Smartmatic’s control over vote counting software used in … voting machines … presents a potential national security risk”?
4.- What does the rest of the lengthy Voter Action report say?
1.- Was this the same election team operated by Smarmatic and Dominion in the Philippines in which the Smartmatic executives were accused of bribing the the COMELEC electoral commission president and running a money laundering scheme?
3.- Did Smartmatic terminate its contract with the Venezuelan government, or did it continue to provide its software for regional and municipal elections later in 2017?
1.- Why is America's multibillion-dollar intelligence community unable to detect any foreign attempts to manipulate our vulnerable election system through technology?
2.- What are the problems with the sources, methods, and analyses of American intelligence in detecting such threats, and the human sources so vital to intelligence collection and analysis?
3.- What was the involvement, if any, of the supremely positioned CIA asset Frank Holder to conclude that no evidence exists to indicate Venezuelan attempts to manipulate American electronic voting systems?
1.- Why does the entire US intelligence community, 100 days out from the 2024 elections, not consider foreign manipulation of electronic voting systems to be a threat?
2.- Why does it not see Venezuela or Cuba as important foreign actors?
3.- Could there be an attempt to divert attention away from Venezuela or Cuba?
4.- Can one read into this an intelligence community implication that "distrust" of electronic voting systems not legitimate, but is actually a hostile foreign intelligence operation intended to divide Americans further?
1.- Is the congressman's statement evidence of how the intelligence community influences the views and statements of elected officials, and influences public opinion?
2.- Why does the congressman focus on Russia and Putin?
3.- Why does the congressman, the senior Democrat responsible for oversight of the intelligence community, not chide the ODNI report for being simplistic and avoiding obvious issues?
4.- Where are the Republicans on this?
1.- Why does the entire US intelligence community, 60 days out from the 2024 elections, not consider foreign manipulation of electronic voting systems to be a threat?
2.- Why does it not see Venezuela or Cuba as important foreign actors?
3.- Could there be an attempt to divert attention away from Venezuela or Cuba?
4.- Can one read into this an intelligence community implication that "distrust" of electronic voting systems not legitimate, but is actually a hostile foreign intelligence operation intended to divide Americans further?
1.- Why has ODNI said nothing about foreign corruption, state sponsorship of technological interference, and other vulnerabilities, even after the DOJ indictments in Miami?
1.- Wasn't something similar what happened in 2000 United States presidential election with Florida's "hanging chads'"?
2.- Back in 2000 in the case of Florida's hanging chads, it was suggested that the solution to these potential issues would be solved with electronic voting machines, but now that these electronic machines dominate the U.S. electoral system, are we really safe from issues and risk of tampering election results, not only in swing states? or rather vulnerabilities of the electoral system have intensified bringing with them, in addition threats of foreign manipulations and National Security.
3.- How can one take Congressman Lieu’s concerns about hacking in small, decisive counties in swing states to throw an election, and apply that to insider threats, including within electronic voting companies?
4.- Did Congressman Lieu uncover weaknesses in how federal election officials view interference in America’s electronic voting systems?
1.- Would Maduro’s declaration put Smartmatic in a political bind, now that it has become a global company preaching “trust” and “transparency”?
2.- Would there have been any possibility of the July vote being clean and transparent, or close enough so that Smartmatic could take credit for a secure and flawless voting process regardless of the results?
3.- Would Maduro’s move require Smartmatic to distance itself from the regime, at least in public?
1.- Would this have been a proper time and pretext for the United States to investigate Smartmatic, as relating to voter fraud in Venezuela and the company’s potential threats to the American voting system?
2.- If Smartmatic had not suddenly sold Sequoia and derailed the CFIUS investigation, would CFIUS have uncovered Smartmatic's owners?
3.- If so, would Smartmatic have been subject to American sanctions on Venezuelan regime figures?
1.- Why did it take two days after the Trump administration’s sanctions on Maduro for Smartmatic to issue a public statement distancing itself from the regime?
2.- Did Smartmatic immediately cancel its existing contracts with the Venezuelan regime?
1.- If Smartmatic alleges that the Venezuelan government manipulated the election results, why is it now handing over its source code to be audited for the next election?
2.- Is Smartmatic collaborating with the Venezuelan government to continue manipulating the election results?
3.- If Smartmatic broke commercial relations with the Venezuelan government and even sued it, why does it host the source code to carry out an electoral process?
4.- Smartmatic used some of its engineers to deliver the source code to the Venezuelan regime after it manipulated the election results?
1.- With Smartmatic's first sponsor, Jorge Rodriguez, now running all information and communications in Venezuela, has Smartmatic outlived its usefulness in that country?
2.- Is this split with the Venezuelan regime a simple matter of business, an act of commitment to clean democracy, or is it an act of political theater to allow it to break with its controversial sponsor and try to put the Venezuelan connection behind it?
3.- If the separation was a simple business matter or an act of commitment to clean democracy, why did Smartmatic wait three months before announcing the break?
4.- Are any Venezuelan regime figures owners of Smartmatic, even after this break?
1.- In the video, did this very capable computer security expert seem confident that he was speaking about Belgrade, Montana, or Belgrade, Serbia?
2.- If he was aware of Dominion's data center in Belgrade, Serbia, might that have made a difference in his assessment, or is the remote access principle the same?
3.- Would Denver's (apparently Dominion USA headquarters) granting of access to a server in Belgrade, Montana (population 10,460) be too much of a coincidence, given the location of Dominion's data center in Belgrade, Serbia?
1.- If no foreign government or entity has had a stake in Smartmatic, how about foreign individuals?
1.- What is FTI’s relationship with Frank Holder and Holder International?
2.- What was Frank Holder’s relationship with the Hugo Chavez regime, and what is it with the Maduro regime?
3.- What was or is Frank Holder’s relationship with Smartmatic?
4.- Why would FTI Consulting give a top post to Mark Malloch-Brown?
5.- What are any connections between Mark Malloch-Brown and Frank Holder?
1.- Why would Dominion choose to build a data center in Serbia?
2.- Are any personal data of American citizens stored on Dominion servers in Serbia?
3.- Did Serbia have a trusted security relationship with the United States at the time?
4.- Did Serbia have an extradition treaty with the United States at the time?
5.- Is Serbia an ally of Russia?
6.- How would Dominion’s data center with a Serbian partner of Huawei compromise the security of American citizens, American candidates and elected officials, and American elections?
1.- Why did Dominion pick Serbia as its main data center in Europe?
2.- Do Serbia and the United States share trusted bilateral security and counterintelligence relationships?
3.- Did the U.S. and Serbia have an extradition treaty before 2019?
4.- What is the security culture of Dominion to ensure security and integrity of data?
5.- Is Serbia a participant in the European Union sanctions against the Venezuela regime?
6.- Is any Dominion software used in American elections written in Serbia?
7.- Is any Dominion software used in American elections administered in Serbia?
1.-Did Mark Malloch-Brown ever provide evidence of any independent, best-practices audit of Smartmatic’s source code and software?
2.- Did Malloch-Brown ever offer or challenge a credible, independent third party to audit Smartmatic’s source code and software?
3.- What is Malloch-Brown’s new stress on Smartmatic “trust”?
1.- In Indicating that “the American people” won’t “trust” technology “right away,” is Malloch-Brown, a foreigner, implying that Americans need to be persuaded to accept his solutions?
2.- Is Malloch-Brown speaking of transforming American democracy from written ballots at polling stations to centralized Internet voting controlled by foreign companies?
3.- What about the issues of transparency in the American voting system, reliability of the results and protection against foreign manipulation of the electoral process and National Security? How could technology from Venezuela and Malloch-Brown provide a solution to this issue?
1.- By participating with American organizations of one political party, is the Smartmatic Chairman, as a foreigner representing a foreign company, showing partisanship in American elections?
2.- What does this mean for American national sovereignty?
1.- Back in the UK, Malloch-Brown is promoting the digitization of British democracy as he does with American democracy. How does this undermine the sovereignty of each country?
2.- Does Malloch-Brown appear to be promoting the obsolescence of paper ballots and going to the polls to vote, and replacing traditional voting in advanced democracies with electronic voting systems, and to move toward 100 percent Internet voting?
1.- Why does Malloch-Brown only cite partisan American authorities and globalist transnational authorities to fortify his argument for Internet voting?
2.- How do his arguments show an ideological agenda behind electronic and online voting?
3.- How does his global approach diminish the sovereignty of people and nations?
1.- Why are Smartmatic executives in the United States claiming to “strengthen democracy” by using their systems to facilitate “dialogue between governments and citizens”?
2.- Is it the job of an electronic voting vendor to facilitate such dialogue?
3.- What does voting and tabulation have to do with citizen-government dialogue?
4.- What larger agenda are Mugica and Malloch-Brown promoting?
1.- Smartmatic's comment on government putting "more control in the hands of citizens" is foreign to American political philosophy, which views the government-citizen relationship the other way around. Why does Smartmatic presume that government's duty is to give the citizens more control of voting?
2.- Why would a foreign company like Smartmatic be promoting the government taking the biometric data of private citizens if they wish to exercise their right to vote?
3.- If a foreign electronic voting vendor is handling the data for biometrics, is the voters' most private biometric information not under the control of foreign companies?
4.- What can foreign powers do to exploit that?
1.- Why did CISA invite Smartmatic to join its emergency election security exercise?
2.- What does the participation of Smartmatic with America’s national security and cybersecurity agencies say about the due diligence and professionalism of the US intelligence and security communities?
2.- Could the Biden Administration have included Smartmatic for political reasons?
1.- What was the regime's interest in controlling the voting software and technology?
2.- Why did they reject ES&S in their economic proposal, because they did not allow them to control the voting software?
3.- The purchase of 28% of the shares of the software developer company by the Venezuelan regime, allowed them to create a custom-made software?
4.- Why Jorge Rodriguez was the right person to negotiate with the companies?
5.- In this context, why is Jorge Rodriguez so emphatic and interested in contracting, for the automation of the Venezuelan elections, a company that will allow the CNE to control the software? With what purpose?
6.- Is it for this reason that Jorge Rodriguez handpicks Bizta, a small company with no experience in electoral processes, as the provider of the country’s voting system?
7.- Is it because Bizta would give him the control of the software and therefore of the electoral results?The National Electoral Commission is engaged in negotiations with the American ES&S company to buy voting machines, but not the software.
1.- Was the Cook County Clerk aware of Smartmatic's background and its controversial relationship with the Venezuelan government?
2.-What guarantees or audits did the Cook County request from Sequoia to ensure transparent voting, given the participation of its parent company, Smartmatic, in electoral processes highly criticized for being fraudulent?
3.- Did the county have the opportunity to audit the election software, knowing that Smartmatic built the system specifically for their elections?
1.- Did Representative Teodoro Locsin want to warn the Senate about the flaws in the Muslim Mindanao election pilot due to Smartmatic’s lack of experience in the region?
2.- Did the want to give equal participation and bidding opportunities to other companies and newest technologies in the 2020 election process?
3.- Why did they dismiss the decision and finally awarded the contract to Smartmatic-Dominion?
4.- Why did TIM withdraw from the Joint Venture with Smartmatic at some point of the bidding process and later changed its mind?
1.- Why is Smartmatic alleging interference in the company's business in Puerto Rico and Mongolia, if both companies signed confidentiality agreements?
2.- If the company selling Sequoia is SVS Holding, why is Smartmatic suing Dominion Voting Systems for the use of SAES technology and not SVS Holding?
3.- Dominion previously declared that it did not have Smartmatic's technology or software in its possession, in its declaration Dominion commits perjury or did not know the intellectual property of the assets acquired from Sequoia?
4.- Did Dominion Voting Systems have payment or royalty agreements with Smartmatic for the use or licensing of its technology?
5.- Why would Smartmatic argue that Puerto Rico is not part of the United States of America?
1.- Why does the Automated Electoral System Observatory (AES Watch) accuse COMELEC and Smartmatic officials of jeopardizing the 2010 elections?
2.- Why if the Smartmatic - Dominion electoral system presented massive failures during the 2010 election, does COMELEC not open a new bidding process for external companies?
3.- Why if the complaints are based on irregularities in the compliance with the Electoral Modernization Law, the congress does not issue a resolution based on the facts reviewed by them in the 2010 election?
4.- Why Comelec does not assume responsibility for the distribution of defective Smartmatic equipment in the 2010 elections that ended up in the interpellation of Smartmatic in the Congress?
5.- Could the 2010 Philippine elections been a test for running future elections in the United States?
6.- This case pre-dates by more than a decade the federal grand jury indictment of Smartmatic executives for alleged corrupt practices in the Philippines over the 2010 elections. In hindsight, what can we learn from the Philippine investigations and court cases?
1.- Why did Jack Blaine say that he was named President of Sequoia “for external purposes” but was not a corporate officer?
2.- How could the unsecured purchase of Sequoia from Smartmatic be above suspicion unless Smartmatic, a Sequoia creditor, was still integrally part of the Sequoia business?
3.- What are some of the things that Blain did NOT say about Smartmatic or the transaction?
4.- What does Jack Blaine mean by Smartmatic and Lawyers encouraged sequoia Management to organize SVS as a Holding Company?
5.- If Jack Blaine was the president of Smartmatic why did he declare that he had no control over the company and the control was in the hands of Antonio Múgica?
1.- Why would a small company like Smartmatic attract the attention of Mark Malloch-Brown?
2.- Who are the other figures in SGO Smartmatic – Nigel Knowles and David Giampaolo – and what are their roles?
3.- How could a Smartmatic alliance with Malloch-Brown expand the company’s business and its political influence in elections around the world?
4.- Was Malloch-Brown appointed Chairman of SGO to leverage his connections from his previous position as Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations in favor of SGO/Smartmatic?
5.- Does the Malloch-Brown connection with FTI have anything to do with Malloch-Brown’s subsequent involvement with Smartmatic? Is Frank Holder a common connection, and if so, what could this mean?
6.- If a foreign power owned or controlled Smartmatic, how could Malloch-Brown help strengthen the influence of that foreign power?
1.- Why does House Intelligence panel’s report not mention the possible strategic threats also in the American electoral system, considering that the electronic voting machines used in the elections may also have components manufactured in China or technology suppliers and warehousing related to China?
2.- Has the origin of the components of the electronic voting machines used in the U.S. electoral system been verified? Are any of them manufactured or linked to Huawei or other Chinese suppliers?
3.- Is the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence aware of the existence of a WikiLeaks cable where the Smartmatic CEO tells US Ambassador in Caracas, William Brownfield that most of the electoral and electronic machinery was made in China? Did they question Smartmatic CEO or the US Ambassador about this?
4.- Was the House of Intelligence Panel aware at the time of issuing this report, about the concerns raised by Congresswoman Maloney and the CFIUS investigation requested by her for potential links of Smartmatic with Venezuelan government, a government openly sympathetic and commercial and ideological ally of China? (..and Russia, and Iran)
1.- Why is Smartmatic celebrating and taking pride in the results of the 2015 Venezuelan parliamentary elections, the first and only elections with unfavorable results to the Chavista regime in more than 10 years?
2.- Is Smartmatic trying to mitigate rumors and criticism for its alleged ties with the Venezuelan government and the fraudulent election results that have characterized the Chavista regime over the years, most of them provided by Smartmatic?
3.- Smartmatic, issues this press statement after the coalition of anti-Nicolas Maduro parties won the election. Was it seeking to enhance the system that allowed Hugo Chavez to win on all previous occasions?
4.- If Smartmatic's SAES system is the best in the world, why is it not massively used until now?
1.- Why did the Secretary of Homeland Security designate the election infrastructure as part of the country's critical infrastructure?
2.- If they had discovered massive vulnerabilities or bugs, why didn't they initiate an investigation into the case?
3.- Is this decision based on the methods used by the counties, or by the companies that conduct elections?
1.- If Smartmatic only does elections in the state of California, why does a Smartmatic machine appear in the county where President Obama votes?
2.- Is this machine carried by another company in the framework of negotiations or transfer of technologies in confidential agreements?
1.- Why don't security agencies enhance this type of activities to secure the American electoral system?
2.- If technology advances, why don't lawyers and judges specialize in electoral technology due to the discoveries made in these events?
1.- Is Smartmatic endorsing the Venezuelan regime's widely documented electoral fraud from 2004 to 2015, to include endorsement of Chavez and Maduro consolidating their dictatorship through Smartmatic voting machines?
2.- What does Smartmatic mean by "multiple audits carried out"? Who carried out those audits, when did they do it, and under whose supervision?
3.- What does Smartmatic mean by Maduro winning the Smartmatic-administered vote "by a razor-thin margin?" How can that apply to elections in the United States run on Smartmatic software?
1.- Did Smartmatic admit that the voting system it provides is not foolproof and was in fact manipulated in the elections to write a new constitution in Venezuela, after claiming in the past that Smartmatic's Voting system was the most secure system in the world?
2.- Why did a sympathetic newspaper note that Mugica declined "to directly answer whether the manipulated turnout numbers changed the result of the election"?
3.- What was Mugica evading?
1.- It could be said that the Venezuelan government has placed Jorge Rodriguez in all strategic areas of the government where it plans to take total control, such as the electoral system, the vice-presidency, the food industry and now communications and information?
2.- How did Jorge Rodriguez's role as Minister of Communication and Information influence the escalation of censorship and retaliation against anti-regime media and manipulation of the information?
3.- This appointment formally keeps Smartmatic's sponsor in charge of the government systems that would administer the elections?
4.- Does it place Smartmatic in a conflict of interests in its Venezuela operations?
1.- Why does the Justice Department not mention foreign election interference as a counterintelligence problem, as FBI Director Wray did in his Senate testimony announcing the Foreign Influence Task Force?
2.- Does the Justice Department indicate any awareness of foreign "insider threats" to election systems technology, or is it focused on propaganda, disinformation, and hacking?
3.- How can Adam S. Hickey be so sure that no foreign government has succeeded in perpetrating electoral fraud and why is he being emphatic in trying to dismiss the mere doubt that it has occurred and label such doubt as prejudicial?
1.- Is Jorge Rodríguez the mastermind behind the creation of an electoral software that has allowed Chavismo to stay in power?
2.- What connections did Delsy Rodriguez have with any Smartmatic co-founders or executives, and what was the nature of those connections?
3.- What is the extent of the Jorge Rodriguez-Delsy Rodriguez family connection with Smartmatic and its co-founders/executives?
1.- What business policies does Dominion Voting Systems have when receiving funding from investor groups?
2.- Does Dominion Voting Systems screen its investors and associated holding companies as part of its business policies?
3.- What danger to national security is posed by investor groups having power in U.S. election systems?
1.- American talent is flattering, do election technology companies really care about their security systems or are they just relying on their Air gap or disconnected network technology?
2.- With independent computer engineers and hackers repeatedly stressing the likelihood of threats to election systems by foreign suppliers, why has the United States not taken the warnings seriously?
3.- Having an 11-year-old child who has been able to breach other entry points to the voting system certainly sets off alarm bells and arouses the U.S. government's interest, but why hasn't the US government taken enough interest in other potential vulnerabilities of the electoral system, which may come from the influence of foreign governments in the electoral system itself?
4.- And what about the manufacturing of the components of the electronic voting machines manufactured in countries like China or vulnerabilities in the access to the servers where the records are stored? Has this been mapped and verified end to end by the U.S. government to ensure national security?
1.- Did the Treasury Department consider the possibility that those being sanctioned included the individuals who provided the seed money to Bizta to develop the Smartmatic software, the $91 million contract to get Smartmatic off the ground, and subsequent large contracts to make Smartmatic viable enough to become an international player to buy American election companies?
2.- Did Treasury investigate whether Smartmatic has hidden owners who include sanctioned Venezuelan regime figures?
3.- Should Smartmatic and its executives be under the same sanctions?
1.- What threat would Huawei technology present to the United States if American electoral systems and data were stored on Huawei servers?
2.- What measures has the US taken to ensure that Huawei servers and partnering companies are not involved with vendors who provide electronic voting services in the United States?
1.- If the Senate recognizes that there are known vulnerabilities in election systems, why have they rejected bills like “SAFE” and “SHIELD” that sought disclosure of voting machine vendor software and hardware?
2.- If the integrity of elections is under threat, why don't security agencies implement rigorous measures to prevent data breaches and directly monitor companies?
3.- Does this mean that 92% of the U.S electoral market may be threatened by the influence of foreign adversaries due to security vulnerabilities of the voting systems companies?
4.- What actions has the government taken since 2019 in response to the alarms raised by our nation’s intelligence services and some members of U.S. Congress to protect the integrity of our electoral system and our democracy?
1.- Since Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF) is run out of the FBI's Counterintelligence Division, is Venezuelan interference in American elections therefore considered a counterintelligence threat?
2.- If so, what foreign intelligence services would be carrying out that threat? The Venezuelan intelligence service? The Cuban intelligence service? The Russian intelligence services? The Iranian intelligence services? The Chinese intelligence services?
3.- Does the FITF know about the allegations made by the congresswoman Carolyn Maloney back in 2006 regarding the potential threat to national security from the voting system companies Sequoia and Smartmatic and their ties to the Chavist regime?
4.- Is the FITF taking into consideration the possibility that the risk of foreign influence of U.S. voting system may not just be external threats of cyber-attacks against the voting infrastructure, but internally within the voting system companies themselves being maneuvered by foreign governments hostile to the United States?
1.- How is it possible that election technology vendors in the U.S. are not subject to regulations requiring them to follow best practices in terms of cyber security?
2.- If more than 80% of the U.S. electoral market is in the hands of only 3 voting system vendors, isn't it enough for the security of at least one of them to be breached to seriously jeopardize the American electoral system?
3.- Have the private companies that supplied voter registration databases and electronic pollbooks been audited and periodically reviewed?
4.- What about the electronic voting systems and its software source code? Have they been periodically reviewed since 2019?
1.- What has the US done to ensure that Huawei has no role in American elections?
2.- What has the US done to require electronic election vendors to have no involvement with Huawei?
3.- How sure can we be confident that Dominion's data center in Belgrade, Serbia, is not used to store data and software concerning American voters and elections?
1.- Why did Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer allow this bill to die in committee?
2.- Has any law been enacted over the past five years to "require federal and state inspection of source codes of private electronic voting vendors' technology"?
1.- Threats to American elections has gone from an FBI concern to a full intelligence community concern. What public information is available to indicate that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has considered foreign regime control or infiltration of electronic voting systems to be a threat, and what has been done about it in the last 5 years?
2.- Did the Election Threats Executive (ETE) or someone from the Intelligence Community, review the potential threat from alleged links of voting system companies in US electoral system with foreign governments?
3.- Did the FBI, CIA and other spy agencies comply with DNI Coats' orders to appoint a single election security officer for each agency?
1.- Could these machines have been responsible for shifting votes in certain Georgia counties in the 2020 election?
2.- Which election security experts did the State of Georgia work with to ensure that the Dominion machines it was acquiring were secure?
3.- Were independent audits of the Dominion company conducted before it was chosen to provide the voting system, including its software?
4.- Based on what evidence could the CEO of Dominion assure that it offered the most security-focused voting system on the market? Who audited or certified this to be true?
5.- Why have certain Georgia officials and politicians opposed a thorough audit of the machines and their software?
1.- Rep. Lofgren seems extraordinarily well informed about election technology source codes. What are her biggest concerns?
2.- This is the second piece of legislation in 2019 that Rep. Lofgren called for independent "inspection" of source code. Why did both of her bills fail? Was any foreign influence involved?
1.- Why did Rep. Lofgren's SHIELD Act, like her SAFE Act, pass the House (with almost unanimous Democrat support) but die in the Senate?
2.- What influences might have been at play to kill the legislation without debate or vote in the Senate?
1.- Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has shown knowledge and interest about digital communications, yet has not entertained regulation of large search engine companies or large social media companies, which are generous campaign contributors. Is he showing a pattern here in letting the electronic voting legislation of Rep. Lofgren, a fellow New York Democrat, from having hearings, discussion, and votes before the Senate?
1.- Why did neither political party, nor the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF) or the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, appear to take the Brennan Center's concerns seriously?
2.- "Private vendors' central role in American elections makes them prime targets for adversaries" - What has the FBI been doing about it?
3.- "Foreign ownership of vendors (whether foreign nationals, or agents of foreign governments, own companies performing critical election functions)," and "supply chains (where parts, software patches, and installations come from; how are they transported; and how they are kept secure)" - who in responsible for election security has been tracking this?
4.- Did the 2016 Russia collusion narrative cause blindness toward smaller, less traditional threats like Venezuela's regime?
1.- A foreign power exploiting vendors to target single counties in a swing state to manipulate a national election: The Brennan Center was on this in 2019. Why weren't political officials, counterintelligence leaders, and election security authorities paying attention?
1.- Could the Brennan Center be raising concerns about the Dominion data center in Belgrade, Serbia?
2.- What has been done at the local, state, and federal levels since 2019 to ensure that Huawei or any adversary company is involved with American election systems?
1.- The Brennan Center gives a careful and unequivocal warning about insider threats to election voting systems in the United States, in the context that includes foreign vendors. What has been done in the past 5 years to ensure against insider threats?
1.- Did either the Trump-Pence or Biden-Harris administrations do anything to provide federal oversight of election vendor companies since 2019?
2.- Did Congress?
3.- Did any state?
1.- Could lack of transparency in foreign ownership of election vendors be a corrupting influence on American election processes and tabulation?
2.- Could there have been corruption involved in the US testbed for Smartmatic in 2006 - the corruption-plagued Cook County, Illinois?
3.- Why was one of the most corrupt counties and cities in the United States the first site for Smartmatic technology?
1.- What progress has been made since 2019 on the Brennan Center's recommendation to create "a stringent yet flexible standard" that "could ... impact companies such as Dominion Voting Systems, the second-largest voting machine vendor in the United States, whose voting machines are used by more than one-third of American voters"?
1.- Why has the federal Election Assistance Commission not acted under its own authority under the present laws, as the Brennan Center argues, when it doesn't need new laws to require foreign election vendors to disclose their ownership?
2.- How did Smartmatic's divestment of its American assets, and its leasing of software to those assets and other companies, avoid a CFIUS investigation to the company's ownership, and the ability of its software to serve as a foreign malign influence on American elections?
1.- How lax has the United States been, across the political board, among federal security agencies, and at every level of government from local to state to federal, to allow foreign adversaries to be part of our election supply chain?
2.- Who is responsible?
3.- Has anything been improved since 2019?
1.- What does it mean for the man who provided the seed money to Smartmatic's software developer, and gave Smartmatic opaque contracts to launch it as an international company, to become the visible force behind Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro?
2.- Do Jorge Rodriguez, his sister Delsy, or other regime figures have any investment or silent partner relationship with Smartmatic or its executives?
1.- What does this mean for Dominion's data center in Belgrade, Serbia?
2.- Once again, has the US investigated whether or not Dominion's Serbian data center is affiliated with Huawai or uses Huawei technology?
3.- Has the US investigated whether American electronic pollbooks, tabulation systems, and other data are stored on Huawei devices?
1.- Have Georgia election officials taken the computer security experts' concerns seriously since 2021?
2.- Have any election officials in any state taken their concerns seriously enough to investigate thoroughly?
3.- How about at the federal level?
1.- If the "breach of the system" was not due to hacking but to an internal compromise of the Smartmatic system, what does this mean for Smartmatic technology used in the United States?
2.- If the government of the Philippines can detect these breaches and compromises, why can't the government of the United States find them?
1.- Why did CISA leadership plan to release the report on a Friday, the traditional day for bureaucracies in Washington to release bad news to minimize public attention?
2.- Was the leak from CISA on the previous Monday done by a dissident in the agency, to ensure that the public and authorities got the message?
3.- Other than to hide bad news on a Friday, why would CISA leaders not have released the report as soon as it was finished, rather than to wait five days with it sitting on the shelf?
1.- Before issuing security advisories, should CISA invest sufficient time to analyze vulnerabilities, is it possible that these flaws have had repercussions in electoral events?
2.- Has CISA not found vulnerabilities in other electoral systems used in American elections?
3.- Does CISA comply with any annual review protocol of the systems of the companies supplying electoral machines?
4.- Is there any random review protocol of equipment and devices used in elections to ensure possible failures during the electoral event?
1.- Why are DHS and CISA, despite years of public exposure of the threats, still found to be unprepared for 2020 election security?
2.- Who in DHS and CISA are responsible for this failure?
1.- Politico, an ideological foe of the Trump administration, warns of "staggering" security failures in the Smartmatic systems running 2020 elections the most populous county of the United States. What were those flaws, and were they fixed in time?
2.- Have those flaws been identified and fixed since 2020?
1.- Are the voting machines really not connected to the internet?
2.- Have the servers of the voting system companies been checked by the federal government?
3.- How and where do they store their data? How do they transport it? Where are their servers located?
1.- Would this HBO documentary serve to urge DHS & CISA to shift the focus of their strategy and action plans to protect our election systems, toward voting machines and voting system companies in U.S. elections, and ensure that they remain out of reach of malicious foreign influences?
1.- Is it proper for an official at an election vendor company to donate to make partisan political donations, however small?
2.- How does this private donation match with the foreign Chairman and CEO level of identification with a single party in the United States?
3.- Does this politicization represent a larger threat to the integrity of election voting systems?
1.- Are these election vendor companies doing all they can to ensure the integrity and impartiality of their systems?
2.- Why did it take so long for ES&S to come up with a policy?
3.- Why didn't Dominion, under fire for so long, not come up with a policy by this point?
1.- Has Smartmatic let independent hackers get into its voting systems for credible troubleshooting?
2.- Has Dominion?
1.- Four years after the fact, did the Dominion voting machine system in Georgia make things better or worse?
2.- Would Georgia have been tied up in four years of litigation had it simply used paper ballots and transparent hand-counting of votes?
3.- Which politicians and political interests stand to benefit from the Dominion machines versus paper ballots and hand-counting? Which stand to lose?
1.- Did the software change indeed make things more severe, as predicted on PBS?
1.- How can federal authorities claim in 2020 that the elections the "most secure in history" when CISA, the Government Accountability Office, the Brennan Center, and so many others said the opposite?
2.- Four years later, how accurate was this statement?
1.- Is this a true statement? Did Smartmatic ever license, rent, or otherwise supply any technology of any kind to Dominion?
2.- Is it true that Smartmatic never had any ties to any government anywhere, including Venezuela?
3.- Is it true that Smartmatic never had any ties to any intelligence service?
4.- Is it true that Smartmatic has never had any ties to any political group when its leaders have a track record of being partisan, and its chairman is Mark Malloch-Brown?
1.- Don't several of these issues show that a foreign regime, if it owned or controlled source codes of software, could do exactly what CISA says could be done to manipulate American elections?
2.- Since CISA states absolutely that it "has no evidence that these vulnerabilities have been exploited in any elections," isn't CISA saying that the intelligence community has never detected anything, anywhere?
3.- What does that have to say about our intelligence capabilities, and the people running them, if they cannot detect ANY foreign exploitation of our election system vulnerabilities?
4.- How did assets as well-connected as Frank Holder influence the collection, analysis, and assessments of intelligence on Venezuela or Cuba's attempts to influence or manipulate our elections through exploiting Venezuela-origin technology?
1.- What is the status of this bounty?
2.- Why did the announcement not include foreign control of source codes and software, despite years of warnings?
1.- With Huawei considered such a priority threat, what FBI action has there been on ensuring that electronic voting systems vendors are not connected in any way to Huawei?
2.- What did the FBI do to warn both sides of the Dominion controversy in Georgia about Huawei?
3.- What has the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) done to ensure against any Huawei connection with Dominion?
1.- Why won't Smartmatic follow a court order to permit independent access to its servers?
2.- What does Smartmatic continue to hide in client countries worldwide?
3.- What kind of pattern can we detect across Latin America, the Philippines, Europe, Africa, and the United States?
1.- Has the new Foreign Malign Influence Center, which houses the Election Threats Executive, looked beyond mere propaganda, disinformation, and hacking to find technological malign threats?
2.- If so, what have been its warnings to federal, state, and local electoral authorities? (Most such authorities have no security clearances, so any warnings would have to be unclassified, and therefore public knowledge.)
3.- Why has there been an absence of warnings to electoral authorities about foreign-owned or -controlled technologies designed to manipulate our elections?
1.- Is there a serious concern about Beijing's ability to spy on Americans, is there the same concern about the theft of election data?
2.- According to Brennan Center alerts, could data theft affect a county's or state's voting behavior?
3.- The EAC, CISA and Security Agencies have discussed the findings of the election infrastructure with the same insistence as the risks posed by Huawei?
4.- Are there concerns about where election data is safeguarded by the companies and what communication devices they use?
5.- Are there Huawei-related devices that are used in corporate networks as VPN (Virtual Private Network) of election service provider companies?
1.- Does the EAC and CISA have a list of prohibited products or components to regulate election machines?
2.- Is there any product verification protocol that electoral technology companies must comply with according to American standards?
1.- The certification granted to Dominion by the EAC is extended to Dominion as the first distributor of Dominion?
2.- Is the technology licensed from Dominion integrated into Smartmatic's systems?
3.- Smartmatic shares technology directly or indirectly with Dominion Voting Systems?
4.- This technology is inherited from Dominion's purchase of Sequoia Voting Systems?
5.- The software that Luis Vecchi, Smartmatic's President for the region, talks about is the same software used in the Philippine elections?
1.- Why is Smartmatic now engaged in the fighting "election disinformation" business, which since 2016 has been a partisan issue in the United States?
2.- Is Smartmatic trying to dismiss concerns about itself as "election disinformation" unworthy of investigation?
3.- With Smartmatic's former chairman president of the Open Society Foundations, what cooperation is there between the company and the foundations to promote the "election disinformation" idea to undermine public concerns about technological vulnerabilities?
1.- Doesn't the analysis made by these experts seem superficial and even naïve, dismissing the possible threats coming from malign foreign influences through the electoral systems used in the US and around the world?
2.- Isn't it contradictory that precisely CISA, with access to the various reports and warnings about the vulnerabilities of the electronic voting systems used in the U.S. elections, continues to consider the voting system companies harmless despite their refusal to open their source codes for auditing?
1.- While the American system presumes innocent until proven guilty, from a counterintelligence and common sense perspective, does this indictment of Smartmatic executives make sense given the public information available?
2.- Why was this indictment from a federal grand jury, and not from the Department of Justice?
3.- Was the FBI even aware of the grand jury investigation or the facts behind it?
4.- Why were Smartmatic executives, but not the company itself, criminally charged?
1.- Smartmatic was "chosen by Hugo Chavez," the Miami Herald says. What does this mean about the independence of Smartmatic from the Venezuelan regime?
2.- Could Smartmatic executives have been serving all along as agents of the Venezuelan regime or its allies?
1.- Why did Smartmatic downplay things and just refer to "two of our employees," not "executives," as being under criminal indictment?
2.- Why is Smartmatic run by executives with questionable if not criminal integrity, and why is it not being transparent, while portraying itself as a company with "the utmost integrity and transparency."
1.- Why did the Department of Justice news release announcing the federal grand jury indictment appear to go out of its way not to mention Smartmatic by name?
1.- What was the result of the hacking challenge?
2.- Don't government officials and election security experts seem more concerned with building public confidence in the U.S. election system with a somewhat denialist attitude, than actually challenging and combating possible vulnerabilities or threats?
3.- Is it realistic to think that, according to the statements of the director of CISA, the threats facing the security of our electoral system are mainly disinformation, AI fake news and hacking of political campaigns? Doesn't that seem like a very limited and optimistic view of the threats?
4.- Is it correct the statement of “The outcome of an election is unlikely to be swayed by a disruptive event in a single county” specially for the swing state?
1.- Why, after years of public outcry, hacking competitions, assessments from computer engineers, and more, is there "no time to fix" vulnerabilities in America's electronic voting systems in 2024?
2.- Why is it private individuals, and not the US intelligence and counterintelligence communities, who consistently have been warning about the vulnerabilities since for 18 years, with "no time to fix" in 2024?
1.- The question persists: Why no FBI or CISA warning of electronic voting system vulnerabilities?
2.- Why the focus on hacking, leaks, and propaganda?
3.- Why still no concern about the Venezuelan regime?
1.- Why does the entire US intelligence community, 45 days out from the 2024 elections, still not consider foreign manipulation of electronic voting systems to be a threat?
2.- Why does this intelligence assessment report - falsely, given the Kremlin's public statements - that the Russian regime supports the candidacy of former president Donald Trump and opposes the candidacy of Kamala Haris and the Democratic party?
3.- Why does it not see Venezuela or Cuba as important foreign actors?
4.- Could there be a US intelligence attempt to divert attention away from Venezuela or Cuba, and if so, why?
1.- If election infrastructure is considered critical to the United States, what additional regulations apply to companies such as Dominion and Smartmatic having their application development centers and specialized support outside the United States?
2.- Does Serbia have the full confidence of the United States to maintain a critical infrastructure that allows citizens to elect their representatives?
3.- Why has Dominion maintained this structure since its inception as a company in Serbia?
4.- What danger does it pose to the United States for a company that serves a high volume of counties to establish its critical infrastructure outside the United States?
5.- Are security agencies and their advisors aware that these companies develop their systems outside the United States?
6.- Do the source codes of these companies go through different review and approval protocols than those of local companies?
1.- Was Congresswoman Maloney correct when she said “Smartmatic decided to sell” before CFIUS could complete its investigation of the company’s owners?
2.- Did Smartmatic’s sale of Sequoia effectively kill the CFIUS investigation?
3.- Absent a conclusive CFIUS investigation, will it ever be known who really owns or controls Smartmatic?
1.- Why did Dominion specify the technologies acquired from Sequoia, yet not mention that they were from Smartmatic?
2.- Why the vagueness?
3.- With the Huffington Post breaking the story, why did Dominion suddenly become specific about who owned what software?
4.- Why did Dominion not take legal action against the Huffington Post for saying, “The answer is clear: Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez is still tied to a huge percentage of U.S. Elections, as now overseen by a Canadian firm.”
1.- What guarantee do we have that the results of the 2000 Florida’s elections were reliable given the errors that occurred in the voting machines?
2.- Can electronic voting machines really solve the problem of mechanical voting machines and be a reliable option, especially in cases where the outcome of the votes has margins of less than 1% and where any statistical error or potential manipulation, however small, can really change the results?
3.- It can be said that hand recounts should be mandatory to guarantee accurate non-manipulable results?
1.- Why hasn't the US insisted that the source code for electronic voting technology be publicly available online?
2.- Why did this bill, which passed the house, die without a vote in the Senate?
1.- Why did George Soros tap Mark Malloch-Brown to leave Smartmatic just a month after the 2020 elections?
2.- Were Malloch-Brown and Smartmatic working with Soros entities all along?
3.- Is the Soros enterprise financially invested in Smartmatic?
1.- The development of Smartmatic products are made outside the American borders. Is it important for regulatory agencies to carefully monitor the source codes and components of these solutions of a critical infrastructure such as the electoral one?
2.- Beyond Connecticut's findings of not meeting all standards. Was it the Secretary of State's knowledge that the products and software developed by Smartmatic were funded by the Venezuelan government through a 28% stake of its Bizta subsidiary (Bizta R&D) in Venezuela?
3.- Smartmatic indicates that it will develop a DRE that meets accessibility requirements and use it in Venezuela's fall elections. Will this model be used with the SAES software, of which the Venezuelan government is a shareholder?
4.- Venezuela is the trial and error center for implementing electoral technology in the United States?
1.- All products used in the American elections are developed in Serbia, are security agencies aware of Huawei's business with men linked to the Serbian state communications?
2.- If Dominion headquarters are interconnected via VPN, how are these communications established?
3.- The Serbian state-owned company Telekom Srbija is the provider of Dominion's communication services?
4.- Why does Dominion claim the Philippine elections as a success when its equipment was the focus of failures according to Smartmatic?
5.- Are there any links between Dominion Serbia and the Chinese company Huawei?
1.- Does the lack of technical knowledge of the political actors allow election companies to seek absolution in cases where failures and irregularities are observed?
2.- Do election companies such as Smartmatic seek to cede their legal responsibilities regarding the problems caused to the electoral bodies by indicating that they alone provide a limited service?
3.- Why, if the 76,000 precinct scanners failed, did they not postpone the elections?
4.- Were the failures and memories found an attempt of systematic fraud?
5.- Were subsequent audits conducted to analyze the failure of the precinct scanners?
6.- Why did Smartmatic not perform the subsequent test audits and log reviews claiming to Comelec that there were contractual provisions regarding the use of Smartmatic's servers and software?
1.- How is it possible to modify a code that was audited and certified by external entities?
2.- Do the modifications have any general control notified to the political actors?
3.- If Smartmatic did not notify the “cosmetic” change, what makes us think that it has respected the previous certifications that ended in lawsuits?
4.- The resolution of COMELEC to restrict access to Smartmatic is just a measure to appease the scandal?
5.- How President Andres Bautista and Smartmatic qualify before Congress the change as a “cosmetic” change, were the hashes of the application revised to guarantee the integrity of the results?
6.- Is it a constant practice of Smartmatic to refuse to deliver the source codes and modify them at will?
1.- Did Smartmatic really break off relations with the National Electoral Council?
2.- Antonio Múgica's statements were made to try to save Smartmatic's reputation and not to be linked to the Venezuelan regime?
3.- Was Jorge Rodriguez involved as a strategist in the actions of Smartmatic in the communiqués?
4.- What was Smartmatic's interest in ceding the software managed for the National Electoral Council?
5.- This action only responds to Smartmatic's economic interests in using ExCle, S.A. to collect outstanding accounts with the National Electoral Council?
