On Monday morning, nothing was stirring but a cold wind outside the two-story brick building that houses Dominion Voting Systems, the previously little known Denver company that was in the eye of President Trump’s storm to try to stay in the White House.

If you buy into the heavily debunked QAnon conspiracy, the voting machine company based in LoDo is behind an international plot to throw the Nov. 3 election to Democrat Joe Biden to oust the sitting president, though not one broad enough to secure the Senate or anybody else but Biden. The sprawling conspiracy loops in Venezuela, China, Antifa, George Soros and Black Lives Matter.

Dominion has not responded to Colorado Politics’ request to talk to someone there about the fallout. Instead, it has responded to rumors and allegations on its website.

“Dominion Voting Systems categorically denies any claims about any vote switching or alleged software issues with our voting systems,” the company said. “Dominion systems continue to reliably and accurately count ballots, and state and local election authorities have publicly confirmed the integrity of the process. Claims about Dominion switching or deleting votes are 100% false.”

The company’s reach is significant, however, helping count the votes of about 40% of Americans in 28 states and Puerto Rico.

In Georgia, the company landed a roughly $100 million contract to modernize the state’s election systems before this year’s vote, which likely drew the attention of QAnon.

The story runs through Colorado in other ways. 

On Nov. 13, conservative commentator Michelle Malkin, who lives in El Paso County, interviewed local businessman Joe Oltmann, who said he was trying to out journalists suspected of being Antifa members when he listened to a September conference call of members. Colorado Politics reported on that investigation, including Oltmann’s involvement.

He said a man identified as “Eric, the Dominion guy” assured a Biden victory.

Eric Coomer, who was at least at one time Dominion’s director of product strategy and security, has been central to the broader implications about the company.

Oltmann alleged the person identified as Eric said, “Don’t worry about the election. Trump is not going to win, I made f—ing sure of that” and laughed.

Oltmann, though, failed to record the conference call. He told Colorado Politics he listened to several calls, but had no way to know who this Eric person was and doubted he could fix an election.

The Trump family has since tweeted about Coomer and his alleged remarks.

“They never said Coomer,” Oltmann told Metaxas and said he paraphrased what the person said in his notes, because it was weeks later before he ever heard of Dominion. 

Oltmann said in an interview with conservative commentator Eric Metaxas Tuesday that he is affiliated with John “Tig” Tiegen, the Benghazi conspiracy accuser from Colorado Springs who is an ardent supporter of the president, “frankly, an American hero,” said Oltmann.

Oltmann, the founder of ReOpen Colorado and the conservative political group FEC (Faith Education Commerce) United, and has been featured by a number of far-right media outlets, including Gateway Pundit.

“I didn’t want this,” Oltmann told Colorado Politics. “I have a successful business, and I don’t need to step out and do any of this. This has been nothing but trouble.”

Twitter shut down Oltmann’s account because the company alleged he was spreading misinformation after he posted screenshots from a Facebook account that he said belonged to Coomer. The Facebook account was subsequently taken down and media outlets have not been able to verify its authenticity.

The fact-checking website Snopes ruled: “That doesn’t necessarily mean Oltmann’s claim is false, it just means it is so far not supported by any publicly available evidence beyond his verbal account.”

Oltmann asked why Coomer hasn’t stepped forward to defend himself, if the allegations are false.

Dominion has been coy about Coomer, explaining, “[W]e will not discuss any current or former employees given privacy and safety concerns.”

Colorado Politics received an anonymous email Sunday about employees clearing out their office “in the dead of night.”

“Dominion is not shuttering its offices,” the company stated. “Employees have been encouraged to work remotely and protect the social media profiles due to persistent harassment and threats against their personal safety.”

About that, the company continued, “Dominion employees are being forced to retreat from their lives due to personal safety concerns, not only for our employees themselves, but also for their extended families.”

Dominion has been around since 2002, but since the Nov. 3 election it has been under scrutiny and judgment, but backed by little evidence presented in a courtroom, enough to inspire a judge to keep any of the Trump cases alive so far.

Trump’s now-former lawyer Sidney Powell was laser-focused on Dominion, calling it “election insurance.”

“That’s why Hugo Chavez had it created in the first place,” she told NewsMax, then suggested the technology might involve the work of the CIA.

She also implicated the Republican governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp. “I can’t give you any more details on that, but it certainly warrants investigation,” she told the conservative website.

By Monday, she was no longer a part of the legal team, led by Rudy Guiliani and Jenna Ellis, the former Colorado deputy district attorney who is also a law professor at Colorado Christian University and a constitutional law fellow at its affiliated Centennial Institute think tank.

Colorado elections officials who monitor the heavily tested machines and hand recounts, like the one in Georgia, consistently uphold the accuracy and transparency.

Dominion is a technology platform that has no remote access to the system once they turn it over to election officials, Amber McReynolds said.

“This is conspiracy-crazy,” said McReynolds, the former city and county of Denver elections director who leads the national Vote at Home program now. “It’s not right. It makes no sense. There’s a reason you do public tests.

“There’s a reason why you do post-election audits to confirm all this. You can’t just disregard facts that don’t support the story you’re trying to tell.”

Dominion is a technology platform, she explained, but individual election directors, Republicans and Democrats, are the ones who program it and use it. She said, comparing it to Microsoft.

“Can we continuously improve the security of all these systems? Absolutely,” she added. 

Dominion spokesman Michael Steel made the same point on Fox News last Sunday.

Software experts said it might be possible for a bad actor to reprogram machines to misread bar codes used in the process, but that would be laborious, isolated and hard to escape detection. There has been no evidence presented that supports that it was tried or succeeded.

It’s a shame, McReynolds said, that election officials have to worry for their safety and election workers face harassment because those looking for a reason the president lost are “trying to tell a story and create a conspiracy where there is none.”

Denver was one of the early adopters of the program, and McReynolds and other Colorado officials helped shape it. Her technology team was working with Dominion as early as 2014.

In May 2015, Denver used Dominion to count the votes in the mayoral race, the most public transparent race in the city’s history, she said.

“We literally gave them feedback and they worked with us, it was fantastic,” McReynolds said. “I have a ton of respect for them. I think they’re a good company, and their system has been audited probably more than any system in the country.”

That fall, Republican Secretary of State Wayne Williams started shopping for a system for Colorado and put together a bipartisan committee of Colorado election experts to vet each of the four bidders using eight county pilot projects. Mesa and Denver counties used Dominion, which “won by far,” McReynolds said. “It wasn’t even close, and this was an extensive review by county clerks, election directors and bipartisan experts.”

As for conspiracies, she can think of election vendors chummy with national allies of the president, who also are not supportive of mail-ballot voting, who seemed to have been bypassed by suspicions.

“I think it’s peculiar that the president has decided only to target one system,” McReynolds said.

Williams was early out of the gate in his defense of the company he hired.

“Since its adoption, Dominion machines have been tested in 62 Colorado counties at least 807 times,” he posted on Facebook on Nov. 17. “They have passed every test.”

He explained how each election uses a bipartisan board to test the voting system before using it – in nine statewide elections and counting, so far.

“So, while I can’t speak for the practices of every state (some of whom don’t have the procedural protections and audits we do in Colorado), I can state that in Colorado the voting systems we use accurately record the votes of Coloradans – and we’ve proved it 807 times,” Williams posted.

Republican Sen. Cory Gardner, the state Republican and its chairman Ken Buck each failed to respond to a request for comment about the president’s alleged international conspiracy that runs through LoDo.

The current secretary of state, Democrat Jena Griswold, put out a statement about her confidence in Colorado’s count and dispelled the “unfounded claims and false narratives” by the Trump campaign’s legal team that she called “deeply troubling.” 

“Colorado voters can rest assured that their voices have been heard and we look forward to certifying the 2020 General Election on November 30, notwithstanding any statutory recounts of local races,” she said.

Trump lost in Colorado by 439,716 votes. He lost to Hillary Clinton by 136,286 four years ago.

Dominion Voting SystemsJoeyBunch, Colorado Politics
joey.bunch@coloradopolitics.com
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