What do independent forensic audits say about Smartmatic or Dominion's involvement in Venezuelan elections?
Executive summary
Independent forensic work on Smartmatic’s and Dominion’s roles in Venezuelan elections is contested: historical records and reporting show Smartmatic supplied voting machines and software in Venezuela from 2004 through about 2017 [1] [2], local expert audits commissioned by Venezuela’s electoral council have reviewed systems that were originally developed by Smartmatic [3], while activist and some private forensic teams claim technical similarities between Smartmatic systems used in Venezuela and Dominion installations in U.S. counties—claims that mainstream authorities and peer-reviewed, publicly released forensic datasets have not broadly corroborated [4] [5].
1. Smartmatic’s documented presence in Venezuelan elections
Contemporaneous reporting and company histories make clear Smartmatic became the architect and supplier of Venezuela’s automated voting infrastructure beginning in 2004 and maintained major contracts through the 2010s, a role that is the foundation for any forensic inquiry into Venezuelan election systems [1] [2].
2. What local/commissioned audits have said about the technology
Audits and technical reviews commissioned by Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) and carried out by local university experts have explicitly noted that the national system was originally developed by Smartmatic and that subsequent reviews in 2021 and 2024 involved university teams asked to examine and opine on the electoral technology’s integrity, signaling that at least some independent domestic auditing took place [3].
3. Private forensic claims tying Smartmatic and Dominion features
Privately produced forensic reports and election-integrity groups have publicly asserted that forensic images from U.S. county Dominion EMS servers show “a significant number of common features” to Smartmatic systems used in Venezuela and alleged vulnerabilities such as readable source code or weak password practices—claims advanced in county-level campaigns and by organizations like the Election Crime Bureau [4].
4. Limits, disputes, and the appetite for peer review
Major caveats accompany the private forensic assertions: whitepapers and analyses caution that the technical conclusions hinge on datasets and logs that are not broadly available for independent, third‑party replication and peer review, and mainstream U.S. election-security bodies and officials have disputed claims of mass manipulation absent open forensic datasets [5].
5. Legal investigations and prosecutorial findings that reshape the debate
Federal prosecutors in South Florida have filed allegations in 2025 involving Smartmatic executives and transactions with Venezuelan officials, including claims of a luxury-home transfer tied to the company’s dealings with the electoral authority—developments that bear on questions of influence and motive but do not by themselves constitute published, reproducible forensic evidence of vote manipulation [2].
6. Dominion, licensing claims, and contested technical linkages
Some government records and documents cited in investigations reference forensic duplications of Dominion systems and snippets alleging licensing relationships or code lineage between Dominion and Smartmatic, yet those assertions are presented amid contested interpretations and have not produced a transparent, consensus technical audit in the public domain [6] [5].
7. Bottom line: partial confirmations, persistent gaps, and why that matters
What independent forensic audits definitively confirm is narrow: Smartmatic built and ran Venezuela’s automated system for years and domestic/commissioned auditors have reviewed those systems [1] [3]; what remains unsettled are cross‑jurisdiction technical linkages to Dominion and reproducible forensic proofs of election manipulation—private reports offer provocative technical claims but lack the broadly available raw datasets and peer-reviewed replications required to convert allegation into consensus finding [4] [5].