U.S. Election Software Company Previously Built Confucius Institute ‘Communication Platform’

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Konnech Inc., an American election technology company founded in 2002 based in Okemos outside of East Lansing, Michigan, previously built ChineseBrief.com, a ‘unique interactive communication platform and Chinese language learning tool’ for the Confucius Institute, according to the company’s Facebook page and an archived Michigan State University’s Confucius Institute webpage.

According to Konnech’s website, the company’s ‘PollChief’ software products, which include the ‘Election Worker Management System’, ‘Asset Management System’, and the ‘MyBallot Tracking System’ are used by “thousands of Election Offices across North America”.

Konnech’s software helps manage the poll workers, polling locations, campaigns, assets, mail-in ballots, and supplies necessary to run elections in the United States, Canada, and Australia.

In December 2006, the company posted on their Facebook page, “… Confucius Institute at Michigan State University has reached an agreement with Konnech, Inc. to build ChineseBrief.com—a unique interactive communication platform and Chinese language learning tool.”

In February 2007, an archived webpage of the Michigan State University’s Confucius Institute announced, “The Confucius Institute recently signed an agreement with the Okemos, MI based company Konnech to offer daily 3-5 minute Mandarin lessons delivered to your phone. The phonecasts are sent based on a schedule setup by the user with an on-line interface. The service will be initially free for a limited time. Registration for the service will be available soon.”

A May 19, 2020, article published at InQueensland explained that the Queensland Department of Housing and Public Works conceded it had been a “difficult few years” after the “failure of the election reporting system” — starting with the former commissioner’s “decision to acquire the Konnech system”.

The Queensland digital news company stated, “count reporting problems on election night” were partly the result of “a new computer system not being tested as planned because “coding resources” were locked down in Wuhan”.

Queensland Chief Digital Officer Chris Fechner said: “The delivery of the project was further impacted in the final development and bug fixing stages during January and February 2020, as most of the coding resources were based in Wuhan China and were negatively impacted by the COVID-19 lock-down”.

On July 15, 2020 according to records of the proceedings in Queensland Parliament, MP Fiona Simpson asked the Queensland Premier why, “foreign owned company Konnech was given an important contract to produce the software to administer Queensland’s elections using China based coders over every Queensland coding firm?”

At least three other Members of Parliament — Mr. Lister, Mr. Crandon, and Dr. Robinson — asked similar questions about Konnech, according to Queensland Parliament records.

According to his Linkedin, Eugene Yu, the CEO of Konnech Inc., graduated from Zhejiang University in Zhejiang, China, with a bachelors degree in 1982 and from Wake Forest University with an MBA in 1988. He is a native Chinese and English speaker.

An October 26, 2018 article written in The West Australian entitled ‘Hacking over new software management system at Queensland’s Electoral Commission’ says: “Yu has acknowledged that he uses a team of software developers in China for his election-related projects, including the new system expected to be operational in Queensland for the March 2020 local government poll.”

George Giddings, who worked for Konnech Inc. in 2007, states on his Linkedin page that his experience from the company consisted of, “Was in charge of the day to day business. Driving to detriot to help out the clients. Increase sales and traffic. Talk to the engineers in china during the night”, according to his Linkedin page.

Konnech Software Engineer, Wang Xiang, graduated from China’s Nanjing University with a bachelors degree in Computer Science in 2012. He speaks English and Chinese and went on to get his M.S. in Computer Science at the University of New Mexico where he managed the website of the ‘Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA) of the University of New Mexico’, according to his Linkedin.

The CSSA is the official organization for overseas Chinese students and scholars registered in most colleges, universities, and institutions outside of the People’s Republic of China.

Journalists and human rights groups have referred to the CSSA as government-organized non-governmental organizations used to surveil and report on Chinese students abroad.

In a 2017 New York Times article, chapters of CSSA were described as having “worked in tandem with Beijing to promote a pro-Chinese agenda and tamp down anti-Chinese speech on Western campuses.”