How Elections Have Been Stolen Using Electronic Voting Systems
The Venezuelan whistleblower’s testimony provides a comprehensive account of how Smartmatic election technology was used to manipulate election outcomes in Venezuela and draws direct parallels to vulnerabilities in Dominion Voting Systems used in U.S. elections. The testimony is based on the witness’s two decades of hands-on voting system experience, technical audits, and oversight roles in election management.
TECHNICAL MANIPULATION METHODS
The core mechanism for manipulating elections was the use of the proprietary Smartmatic “SAES data utility” tool. This tool was designed to emulate voting machines and transmit data as if it came from multiple devices. It enabled the injection of false votes into the system in a way that was undetectable during normal audits, because it used authorized credentials and mimicked legitimate election traffic.
Example: In Venezuela’s Merida state election, the SAES data utility transmitted a complete set of results using unauthorized channels, ensuring the win of a government-favored candidate. Regular transmission logs showed no normal activity, but the national tally center reported 100% transmission through the tool, bypassing standard audit and oversight mechanisms.
Passwords were stored in plain text, source code was exposed and easily readable, and systems contained basic encryption flaws. These bugs allowed anyone knowledgeable to access administrator functions and modify vote counts, ballot images, and logs.
In short, the “bugs” were actually features that enabled the manipulation of election results.
Log files were configured intentionally to be too small (e.g., 20 MB).During long U.S. elections, these logs were overwritten, meaning audit trails and potential evidence of manipulation would be permanently lost, preventing post-election analysis and forensic investigation.
Digital ballot images could be changed inside the systems, making “paper trails” unreliable and audits ineffective unless full system access was granted (which rarely occurs).
Smartmatic and Dominion systems contained Chinese-manufactured and Taiwan-assembled components with firmware that couldcovertly enable internal modems. This allowed systems to communicate over the internet, even if software settings showed connections as disabled, creating the possibility of remote election intervention.
When updates—such as “trusted builds”—were performedafter elections (e.g., Colorado 2021), the previous election data was erased, violating legalretention requirements and erasing any digital evidence of tampering.
PROCEDURAL MANIPULATION METHODS
In Venezuela, the witness described monitoring situation roomspopulated by top government officials, where direct orders to manipulate vote tallies weregiven using technological tools. The operations included real-time intervention and resultfabrication as needed for favored candidates.
Whistleblowers and critics were prosecutedwith “evidence” provided by the company to the courts. Judges relied on the company’stechnical experts, who could present manipulated or selective data as proof, quashingdissent or investigation.
Audit functions in Smartmatic and Dominion systems were limited tomodules selected by the vendor. Manipulation tools like the SAES utility were excluded fromreview, and critical programming libraries could be hidden or locked, making independentaudits incapable of detecting sophisticated manipulation.