The Dispatch Fact Check followed up with both companies to ask about whether current software used by Dominion grew out of Smartmatic intellectual property from the Sequoia purchase. Stimson did not respond to emails on the subject and Saba merely stated that Smartmatic was not aware “as we were not party to that transaction.”

Publicly available information suggests that one Sequoia product, the Sequoia ImageCast, is the ancestor of at least one of Dominion’s current products: the Dominion ImageCast Evolution, which has been criticized for potential security flaws. Both the Sequoia ImageCast and the Dominion ImageCast Evolution are joint ballot-marking and optical-scanning voting machines designed to assist handicapped voters who are unable to fill out ballots by hand. What’s more, Dominion’s current suite of products all bear the ImageCast name. However, rather than evidence of any ties between Smartmatic and Dominion, this information vindicates, at least in part, Dominion’s claims of independence from Smartmatic software: Dominion developed ImageCast for Sequoia as a subcontractor for the company after Smartmatic sold Sequoia. The New York Times even referred to the machine as “the Sequoia/Dominion ImageCast” in an article shortly after it was introduced in New York in 2008.

Smartmatic attempted to challenge the sale of Sequoia to Dominion in 2012, claiming that Sequoia’s assets “were acquired for significantly less than their true market worth, in a transaction designed to avoid the payment of deferred consideration due to Smartmatic.” Stimson said in an email to The Dispatch Fact Check that the case was settled out of court and “the companies have had no contact since.”