“This was so outrageous and crazy,” says Smartmatic’s 46-year-old CEO Mugica, in a rare in-depth interview. “I thought, no one would believe it.”
The fake news story cost Smartmatic $500 million in potential profits over five years, according to the lawsuit, and derailed their plans to expand into the U.S. . Dominionsix weeks later, blaming the network for taking “a small flame and turning it into a forest fire.” Fox has filed four. motions to dismiss Smartmatic’s suit, citing the company’s First Amendment rights and claiming the content was a matter of public concern.
Elections, of course, are the ultimate public affair, but the mechanics of democracy are, in practice, powered by private enterprise. A handful of companies including Smartmatic, Dominion and Election Software & Systems create and sell the hardware and software that tally and track votes and the lucrative support contracts to keep them going. It’s a sizable global business that One of Smartmatic's touch screen voting machines used in Italy's first fully automated election in 2017.
But the Banamex deal fell through. Mugica found himself depressed and unable to get out of bed for days. When reality hit, he flew to Caracas with Piñate, where they spent eight months in 2004 building and promoting what they claimed was a breakthrough technology: electronic voting that produced fast, uncorrupted results as well as a paper trail that provided a backup way to audit the results. Now standard in all new machines, it was novel at the time.
But the presence of Venezuelans in American elections didn’t sit well with CNN’s Dobbs. The conservative firebrand dedicated multiple of his show to labeling the company as a corrupt foreign entity that was trying to infiltrate the U.S. It was overwhelming and in 2007 the partners sold Sequoia and left the U.S.
MadelinePBerg Fox News = CNN