Here’s some alarming news that’s flown under the radar with all the coverage of the indictments, Trump’s Europe disaster, and his one-on-one meeting with his boss. A Russian oligarch has purchased a software company that maintains part of the voter registration system in the State of Maryland. The Baltimore Sun reports:
At a hastily called news conference, Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller and House Speaker Michael Busch said the FBI informed them and Gov. Larry Hogan that without the state’s knowledge, a Russian investor had bought the software vendor in 2015.
Officials say they’ve found no indication that the 2016 election had been compromised. They’ve asked the governor to investigate the contract, and they’ve asked Federal officials to help ensure there have been no breaches of the system.
The name of the company is ByteGrid LLC, and the Russian investor is Vladimir Potanin.
An ownership stake in the company was purchased by AltPoint Capital Partners, whose largest investor is a Russian oligarch named Vladimir Potanin, the election officials said.
Busch said that Potanin is “very close” to Russian President Vladimir Putin and that Altpoint’s managing partner is Gerald T. Banks, a Russian millionaire who changed his name from Guerman Aliev.
It turns out that Maryland’s voter registration system did, in fact, have a problem during this year’s June primary where 80,000 voter changes of address were not sent to the system. The state says that there’s been “no indication” that the Russians had anything to do with this, which is different from saying it’s been determined that they didn’t.
This might be just another in the long string odd coincidences involving the Russians and our elections. I just wouldn’t bet on it.