'Dominate' misused bothers me too, but it stopped baffling me so much when I realized people probably had in mind (if unconsciously) the family of words that includes accurate, celibate, delicate, literate, private...

Er, assuming the faulty adjective 'dominate' is pronounced to rhyme with those, as a mis-hearing of 'dominant'. If the people who spell it that way think it's pronounced the same as the verb, I don't know what's wrong with them.