National: Dominion Voting’s new owner pledges impartiality, says, ‘I’m not on anybody’s side’ | Marshall Cohen/CNN

The new owner of Dominion Voting Systems affirmed in his first interview since buying the company that President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election and pledged that his company’s machines, used by nearly a third of US voters, won’t be misused to help either political party. Scott Leiendecker, a former Republican election official from St. Louis who already runs a separate election tech company, bought Dominion last month and rebranded it Liberty Vote. The surprise move, and a public announcement that seemingly embraced parts of Trump’s push to transform voting procedures, spooked election officials around the US, raising concerns about the future of a company that unexpectedly found itself at the center of Trump’s attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss. Read Article

National: Secretaries of state ask DOJ to clarify how it’s using their voter data | Colin Wood/StateScoop

After receiving letters from the Department of Justice requesting access to state voter data, 10 Democratic secretaries of state on Tuesday drafted their own letter, citing “immense concern” with how that data might have been shared across the federal government. The secretaries write that in recent meetings with DOJ and Department of Homeland Security officials they received “misleading and at times contradictory information” on the topic of their unredacted statewide voter rolls, which can include information like driver’s license numbers, the last four digits of Social Security numbers and birth dates. The letter, addressed to Attorney General Pam Bondi and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, flags an Aug. 28 call with Michael Gates, who was deputy assistant attorney general in the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division until he stepped down this month. Gates, the secretaries wrote, assured them that the DOJ would protect the voter information in compliance with the Help America Vote Act and the National Voter Registration Act. Read Article