Dominion Voting Systems, Inc. today announced that it has acquired from Premier Election Solutions, Inc. (Premier) a wholly owned subsidiary of Election Systems and Software (ES&S), the primary assets of Premier, including all intellectual property, software, firmware and hardware for Premier’s current and legacy optical scan, central scan, and touch screen voting systems, and all versions of the GEMS election management system.
 

As part of the transaction, Dominion also acquired an irrevocable, perpetual license for the AutoMark voting terminals used by voters with disabilities, a similar license for the VoteRemote absentee vote-by-mail processing solution, and rights to spare parts, supplies and other resources necessary to support and service these installed systems. In addition, Dominion will acquire a percentage of existing Premier inventory.
 
Under terms of the agreement, which was approved by the U. S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and nine state attorneys general, Dominion has secured the right to hire current and former Premier employees and to enter into agreements with Premier dealers experienced in deploying and supporting these systems. In addition, the transaction requires that current Premier customers be provided with the opportunity to assign their existing contracts to Dominion without penalty. As part of the transaction, Dominion granted license rights back to Premier, subject to certain restrictions. The transaction also provides limitations on the ability of ES&S to continue to sell the Premier equipment going forward. Premier voting systems are currently in use in over 1,400 jurisdictions in 33 states and serve nearly 28 million American voters.