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  • 2020-11-18 (xsd:date)
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  • Is Dominion 'Subsidiary' Chairman Peter Neffenger on Biden's Transition Team? (en)
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  • In the wake of the U.S. presidential election in November 2020, a series of unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud were circulated by U.S. President Donald Trump and his supporters in an apparent attempt to sow distrust in the integrity of the election and cast doubt on President-elect Joe Biden's victory. Many of these rumors centered on Dominion Voting Systems, a company that provides election software to several counties around the United States. We have already debunked a number of these rumors (no, Dominion did not delete millions of votes; no, the company is not owned or funded by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi or Hillary Clinton; no, a glitch did not switch votes from Trump to Biden), but new wrinkles are continuously being added to this conspiracy theory. One recent rumor claimed that a member of Biden's transition team, Peter Neffenger, sat on the board of Dominion Voting Systems' subsidiary Smartmatic: There are a few kernels of truth to this claim. Neffenger, a U.S. Coast Guard admiral and former administrator of the Transportation Security Administration, is a member of one of the agency review teams aiding Biden's transition to the White House. Neffenger is also the chairman of Smartmatic's board of directors. However, Smartmatic is a competitor of Dominion, not a subsidiary. Eddie Perez, a voting technology expert at the Open Source Election Technology (OSET) Institute, a nonpartisan election technology research and development nonprofit, told The Associated Press that there is no connection between the two companies. Perez said: It appears that Mr. (Rudy) Giuliani is making some wild and unfounded claims that are connecting the dots between companies that appear to be unrelated. Smartmatic and Dominion have also both published statements to address these rumors. Both companies noted that they are competitors in the election space and do not have any financial interests in the other's success. In November 2020, Smartmatic published a response to misinformation to address some of the claims that had been circulating about the company. Smartmatic wrote: In another article, Smartmatic addressed some additional claims that circulated in the wake of the 2020 election. We reproduced the portions of the text relevant to this topic below: Dominion, too, has addressed these rumors. It should also be noted that, while Neffenger is technically a member of Biden's transition team, this does not mean that he has landed a future position in the White House. In fact, Neffenger is only listed as a volunteer, as opposed to a detailee or a full-time transition employee, with the advisory team dealing with Homeland Security. Here is how Biden's Build Back Better website describes the purpose of agency review teams: (en)
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