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Dominions owner Scott Leiendecker and founder of KnowInk an elections technology company
For-profit KnowInk
Website:knowink.com/
Location:St. Louis, MO
Type:Voting technology company
Formation:2011
CEO:Scott Leiendecker

KnowInk is an elections technology company based in St. Louis, Missouri, best known for its products, Poll Print and Poll Pad. KnowInk is the largest electronic polling vendor in the United States, with products in use in over 1,700 districts across 35 states and Washington D.C., as well as two cities in Canada. 1
In March 2023, KnowInk moved to a new headquarters in St. Louis. Attendees of the opening ceremony included Governor Mike Parson (R-MO), St. Louis County Executive Sam Page (D), and St. Louis County NAACP president John Bowman. 2

History
While working as election director for St. Louis, Scott Leiendecker was dismayed at the long lines at polling stations and decided to try to find a technological method of streamlining the voting process. In 2011, Leiendecker founded KnowInk 3 4 with three employees and a single client. 2
Leinendecker and his team’s first major project was the Poll Pad, the first technology that enabled the scanning of a driver’s license on an iPad. 3
In 2016, KnowInk made its first acquisition when it purchased Election Administrators. 5
KnowInk began to rapidly expand in 2018, at which point it had sold 20,000 Poll Pads. By the following year, total sales reached 65,000. In 2020, sales reached 90,000. 5
In 2021, KnowInk acquired BPro, a South Dakota-based company. 5

Poll Print and Poll Pad
KnowInk’s flagship products are the Poll Pad and Poll Print. Rather than signing in voters by hand, the Poll Pad is an iPad-based digital system that centralizes and coordinates voting records within districts, and uses proprietary software to scan voter IDs. The Poll Print is a computerized ballot station that, according to KnowInk, conducts voting in 35-40 seconds and requires 50% fewer employees to man voting stations compared to traditional voting methods. 6 CEO Scott Leiendecker has claimed that the Poll Pad and Poll Print are appealing to Republicans for their security and to Democrats for their speed. 3 As of April 2023, 117,000 Poll Pads have been sold. 5

Controversy
Philadelphia
In September 2019, the Philadelphia election officials ran a test with newly purchased KnowInk products and reported numerous problems, including “failures to properly connect to voting machine printers and inadequate election night reporting.” 7

Slow Voting
After the 2020 election, Government Technology reported that districts in Georgia, Ohio, and Texas with KnowInk voting systems had issues that slowed voting speeds. Upshur County in Texas needed to extend voting hours after 8 PM due to connectivity issues. 8

Dominion Voting Systems
After the 2020 election, Dominion Voting Systems was subject to conspiracy theories that falsely claimed the company had stolen the election from then-President Donald Trump through coordinated voter fraud. One claim against Dominion was that its voter identification machines in Morgan and Spalding Counties in Georgia failed to work, resulting in poll workers using paper ballots that may have been manipulated. Dominion later revealed that its machines in Morgan and Spalding Counties were provided by KnowInk as a subcontractor, and that the machine errors were random. 9
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