One of the late Gilda Radner’s most celebrated characters on classic Saturday Night Live episodes was the confused, irascible Emily Litella. She’d ramble through nonsensical declarations before abruptly declaring, “never mind.”

Emily Litella has morphed into today’s chairman of the Colorado Republican Party, Dave Williams.

Williams and other members of the state party’s leadership have spent years fingering Dominion Voting Systems, a national firm that was based in Denver, as the main character in the conspiracy that stole the 2020 presidential election from defeated former President Donald Trump.

Sixty-two out of 64 Colorado counties use Dominion voting equipment to count election results so the company is an easy foil to promote stolen-election conspiracy theories.

But now Williams is considering using Dominion equipment to count votes at the Colorado Republican State Convention in April. Has Williams gone to the dark side of stolen-election conspiracies?

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As recently as this past November, Williams appointed former state Rep. Ron Hanks as the chairman of the state party’s “Ballot and Election Security Committee.” During his failed run for the U.S. Senate in 2022, Hanks famously made a video of himself shooting a defunct copier with a Dominion sign on it.  Hanks believes the Chinese infiltrated Dominion’s machines in Colorado, thereby stealing our electoral votes from Trump who lost Colorado by 14 points to President Joe Biden.

Even though Colorado voters rejected Proposition HH, the property tax increase scheme sponsored by Gov. Jared Polis and legislative Democrats, by an overwhelming 20-point margin in 2023, Williams and Hanks called on county canvass boards to not certify the election results because it would “declare we acquiesced to systemic fraud and personal corruption,” driven by Dominion.

Criminally indicted Tina Peters, the former Mesa County Clerk, will go to trial in July on charges of illegally tampering with the county’s Dominion equipment, among other charges. Peters claims Dominion fraudulently changed election results.

Williams says Republicans “must unite in prayer and support Tina Peters as she fights the establishment and our corrupt judicial system in her upcoming trial.”  Williams was elected state chairman in a multi-ballot election after promising Peters he would name her executive director of the party.

During a rally for his failed challenge to U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn in 2022, Williams asked a fervent stolen-election conspiracy crowd, “Is everyone ready to fight for election integrity? Is everyone ready to get rid of Dominion voting?”

But now, Colorado Politics reporter Marianne Goodland reports Williams has made a request of El Paso County Clerk Steve Schleiker to possibly use the county’s Dominion voting equipment to count votes at the Colorado Republican State Convention in April — no joke.

The convention will have 3,500 delegates who will elect 10 at-large delegates to the Republican National Convention in July. In the past as many as 250 Republicans have run for national convention delegate at the state convention, so imagine counting 3,500 ballots with more than 250 candidates listed and the delegates each voting for 10 for national convention delegate. Imagine counting those ballots by hand, which is what many Republican stolen-election conspiracists have demanded in the past?

During the 2022 state convention, State Chair Kristi Burton Brown implemented an electronic voting process when delegates had to vote in statewide races for governor, U.S. senator, attorney general, state treasurer and secretary of state with multiple candidates. Pandemonium broke out on the convention floor when stolen-election conspiracy delegates demanded Brown ditch electronic voting and replace it with paper ballots counted by hand. Brown narrowly fended off the challenge but predictably some candidates who failed to get the required 30% to be placed on the primary ballot immediately shouted “election fraud” due to electronic voting.

When Williams was elected chairman at the 400-member Colorado Republican State Central Committee meeting this past March, Brown agreed to use hand-counted paper ballots. Twice, the supposedly fool-proof, hand-counted ballot procedure resulted in more ballots counted than those actually cast. And that was for a hand-counted vote of just 400 people.

As the state convention approaches, Williams appears to be panicking to the point of lowering himself to seek help from corrupt Dominion. Maybe he could appoint Ron Hanks and Tina Peters to oversee the hand counting of 3,500 ballots.

My advice to El Paso County and any other county election official or election systems firm that Williams might approach for help at the state convention: run the other direction because Williams and his fellow stolen-election conspiracists will inevitably scream “stolen election” and “election fraud” regardless of the outcome.

No wonder Dave Williams appears to be saying “never mind.”

Dick Wadhams is a former Colorado Republican state chairman who worked for U.S. Sen. Bill Armstrong for nine years before managing campaigns for U.S. Sens. Hank Brown and Wayne Allard, and Gov. Bill Owens.