THE VOTE COUNTERS HAVE CHANGED HANDS-AND AMERICA SHOULD PAY ATTENTION
When a firm that counts votes gets sold behind closed doors, the price isn’t what matters. What’s being traded is confidence...and that’s the one currency a republic can’t print more of.
Scott Leiendecker.
THE VOTE COUNTERS HAVE CHANGED HANDS-AND AMERICA SHOULD PAY ATTENTION
When a firm that counts votes gets sold behind closed doors, the price isn’t what matters. What’s being traded is confidence…and that’s the one currency a republic can’t print more of.
The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter #593: Saturday, October 11th, 2025
The Sale Nobody Asked For
Dominion Voting Systems…the name you couldn’t escape after 2020…has quietly changed owners.
The buyer: Scott Leiendecker…a former Republican election official and founder of an election-tech company, through a new entity called Liberty Vote.
The price? Undisclosed.
The terms? Sealed tighter than a campaign donor list.
Dominion’s new website language glows with patriotic keywords: paper-based transparency…security…100 percent U.S.-owned.
To the untrained eye it sounds reassuring.
To anyone who has ever sold or bought a company…it’s the language of a rebrand…not a rebirth.
A transaction like this isn’t just about machines and code. It’s about who owns the scoreboard in the world’s biggest political game.
What This Really Signals
Follow the incentives…not the slogans.
If you strip away the spin…a few hard questions appear:
Why would a company mired in lawsuits…with hundreds of millions in legal liabilities…suddenly become an attractive buyout target?
Who financed the deal…and what expectations do those financiers carry?
What are they really buying…hardware…contracts…or influence?
Whenever opacity surrounds a sale that affects public trust…assume the answer hides in the footnotes you’re not allowed to read.
Control, Confidence, and Brand Collapse
Dominion wasn’t just a vendor; it was a brand symbol for trust…or the loss of it.
In business terms…its equity is negative.
When you’ve been blamed…fairly or not…for shaking faith in democracy…you’re not selling a company…you’re selling a crisis.
The new owners now face a paradox:
To clean the brand…they must convince both sides of the aisle that they’re neutral while being led by a man with a partisan résumé.
That’s like asking a used-car lot to rebrand itself as a consumer-protection agency overnight.
The Marketing of Reassurance
Look at the press releases: “paper-based transparency,” “security,” “simplicity.”
It reads like an ad campaign written by a political consultant.
Reassurance marketing works in toothpaste and insurance. In elections…it’s meaningless unless backed by independent audit trails and open source code.
When someone sells you on trust…always ask what you’re not being shown.
Because real transparency doesn’t need adjectives…it just needs access.
The Business Risk of Partisanship
Every business lives on perception.
The moment perception of neutrality dies…markets and electorates alike stop buying.
Imagine Coca-Cola announcing it’s now run by Pepsi’s former marketing chief and promising “balanced flavor.”
That’s Dominion’s problem under new ownership.
Even if Leiendecker operates with monk-like integrity…perception alone can torch confidence.
And in voting systems…confidence is the product.
The Illusion of “100 Percent U.S.-Owned”
The new talking point…“100 percent American-owned”…is clever branding.
But ownership…debt…and control are not the same thing.
Ask any entrepreneur who’s taken private-equity money: the name on the paperwork isn’t always the one calling the shots.
Without disclosure of financing, “American-owned” may just mean American-fronted…patriotic camouflage for investors who prefer darkness to daylight.
The Real Test Ahead
If this sale is truly about restoring trust…the path is simple and measurable:
Independent…continuous third-party audits of both hardware and software.
Public release of all ownership…debt…and governance structures.
Mandatory conflict-of-interest disclosures for every executive and board member.
Open procurement hearings before any state signs new contracts.
If Liberty Vote does these four things…skepticism fades.
If they don’t…the sale becomes a case study in why the public no longer believes official reassurances.
Transparency Is Marketing’s Twin
In every business…secrecy kills faster than scandal.
A brand’s power lies in visible proof of performance.
In politics…that proof is transparency.
You can’t fix disbelief with press releases…you fix it with audit trails so clear even your enemies nod.
If Liberty Vote wants to sell “trust,” they need to understand they’re in the proof business…not the persuasion business.
The Playbook of Confusion
Complexity is the oldest cover for control.
When ordinary citizens can’t follow the jargon…firmware updates…tabulator logic… hash validations…oversight dies by exhaustion.
That’s not an accident; it’s a tactic.
You don’t have to rig a system to control it…you just have to make it too complicated for watchdogs to audit in real time.
Simplify the system and sunlight returns.
Obscure it…and every rumor gains traction.
The Moral: Trust Is the Last Currency
In the marketplace…currency inflates; in democracy…trust deflates.
When citizens suspect the scoreboard is rigged…turnout drops…cynicism spikes…and the entire civic economy contracts.
You don’t rebuild that faith with rebranding. You rebuild it with open books…clear chains of custody…and brutally honest accounting.
That’s the only marketing campaign that works in a republic.
What Citizens Should Demand Right Now
Public briefings in every state that uses Dominion equipment…who owns what… what’s changed…what hasn’t.
Freedom-of-information release of all contracts signed post-acquisition.
Independent certification audits funded jointly by multiple parties…not the vendor.
A citizen oversight board that includes technologists…election administrators… and skeptics.
Sunset clauses on every contract…no perpetual vendor lock-ins.
If those demands sound radical…remember: sunlight was the founding principle of this country.
A Hopkins Style Reality Check
People often say, “Don’t politicize voting machines.”
That ship sailed the moment a political figure bought one.
You can’t un-ring that bell…so the only option left is radical openness.
I call it “the power of over-communication.”
Tell the truth so loudly and so repetitively that liars suffocate from lack of oxygen.
The Cost of Silence
If the public shrugs this off…the precedent sticks:
Partisan ownership of election infrastructure becomes normalized.
Next time…the buyer might not even pretend neutrality.
That’s how liberty erodes…not with tanks…but with transactions.
The Entrepreneur’s Warning
This is a business story before it’s a political one.
Every entrepreneur knows: buy a company with poisoned reputation…and you inherit its ghosts.
If Liberty Vote thinks it can white-label faith in democracy the way you relaunch a soft-drink brand…they’ve misread the market.
Consumers forgive failure; they don’t forgive betrayal.
The Citizen’s Assignment
You don’t need to be a coder or lawyer to protect democracy.
You need to be a customer who demands receipts.
Call your election office. Ask what machines your county uses…who audits them…who pays for upgrades…and what your right of inspection is.
The goal isn’t outrage; it’s ownership…ownership of the process you already fund with your taxes.
The Bigger Picture: Centralization of Control
Every modern system trends toward consolidation…finance…media…tech…now elections.
Each consolidation promises efficiency and delivers dependence.
The antidote is decentralization: multiple vendors…open standards…interoperable audits.
That’s how you keep any one player from owning the scoreboard.
Why This Matters Beyond 2025
Today it’s Dominion. Tomorrow it’s AI-driven ballot verification...biometric voter ID…or quantum-secured ledgers.
If transparency isn’t baked in now…every future innovation will inherit secrecy as its operating system.
You can’t code honesty into a black box.
A Word About Cynicism
Skepticism is healthy; cynicism is surrender.
Skeptics ask for proof. Cynics stop asking because they assume proof doesn’t exist.
The system wants you cynical…it’s quieter that way.
Stay skeptical…not cynical. Demand documentation. That’s how citizens audit power.
The Business of Belief
In marketing…belief drives behavior.
People buy what they believe in.
Democracy works the same way.
If the belief collapses…the behavior…voting…volunteering…trusting…collapses next.
That’s why this sale matters: it’s not about one company; it’s about whether citizens still believe the counting house belongs to them.
The Closing Shot
The price of freedom isn’t blood…it’s vigilance.
If you want to keep the republic…start acting like a shareholder…not a spectator.
Ask questions until the answers come in daylight.
Because once trust is gone…elections become theater…and liberty becomes nostalgia.
BONUS SECTION: Who Is Scott Leiendecker… Really?
On paper, Scott Leiendecker looks like the sort of competent…quietly ambitious operator every local government wishes it had:
Former St. Louis election director…tech entrepreneur…founder of the poll-book company KNOWiNK…occasional GOP consultant.
That résumé explains why headlines call him a “former Republican election official.”
But résumés are cover letters; what matters is the through-line underneath.
Leiendecker built his first company by solving a real problem…digitizing the ancient paper poll-book.
County clerks loved it because it worked.
Over time, KNOWiNK spread to nearly every state. Success like that attracts investors…and by 2018 he had private-equity backing and contracts worth tens of millions. The man knows how to scale.
So why buy Dominion…one of the most radioactive brands in the world?
Because power hides inside broken brands. A business with a tarnished name can be bought for pennies on the dollar…scrubbed with patriotic paint…and relaunched as a “restoration project.”
In business, that’s called reputation arbitrage…you buy something distrusted…promise reform…and profit from the rebound in confidence.
Leiendecker speaks fluent bureaucracy and fluent politics.
That’s a rare, lucrative dialect. He’s positioned himself as the “non-partisan technologist,” the guy who can walk into a Republican legislature or a Democratic secretary of state’s office and sound credible to both.
It’s brilliant positioning…and precisely why citizens should watch closely.
Every powerful system needs a custodian who answers to process…not party. Whether Leiendecker will play that role or leverage the new Liberty Vote platform as a political or commercial beachhead is an open question only transparency can answer.
Until we see the financing…governance…and audit trails, “Who is Scott Leiendecker, really?” remains less biography than test.
If he turns Dominion into a case study in openness…he’ll earn the trust his press releases advertise.
If he hides behind NDAs and talking points…he’ll prove that nothing’s changed except the letterhead.
Either way…citizens should remember this rule:
When someone new owns the scoreboard…the burden of proof is on them…not on the audience watching the game.
Back soon,
-Jack
Paper Ballots for all States 💥💪‼️
“ When someone new owns the scoreboard, the burden of proof is on them…..not on the audience watching the game “ Perfect analogy for what could be a huge conflict of interests.