The state GOP held its bimonthly luncheon with a panel of election deniers as the special guests: Shawn Smith, Mark Cook and Joe Oltmann. What began as an event discussing the election results and Secretary of State Jena Griswold's errors in handling the state's voting system password leak ended with the promotion of unsubstantiated conspiracies about decades of alleged fraud deniers say invalidates every election in recent memory.
"I don't think anybody has any idea what the election results have been in Colorado for twenty years. I would not be surprised if Colorado is still a red state," Smith said to thunderous applause from the crowd of around seventy people gathered at the Maggiano's Little Italy in Englewood.
The election rigging claims didn't end with Colorado: "This was the number-one strategic result I thought we would see in this election: Let [Donald] Trump win while everyone steals the down-ballot while no one is looking," Cook said. "We don't know what the results of the election are. We haven't, likely, for a long time. Decades."
"If I was a bad actor, I would be your president right now," Cook said, spurring laughs from attendees between bites of Caesar salad and fettuccine Alfredo. "I'm serious," he replied. "It would not be that difficult."
Smith, Cook and Oltmann are the state's most vocal election deniers, with the first two infamously having coached Elbert County Recorder Dallas Schroeder on how to break into voting machines in 2021.
Smith is also the whistleblower who found the leaked voting system passwords posted on the Colorado Secretary of State website on a hidden tab of a public spreadsheet. However, he's perhaps better known for participating in the January 6 insurrection or calling for Griswold to be hung in 2022 — a comment that he repeated during Tuesday's event.
"I think anybody who has engaged in election fraud needs to hang, deserves to hang," Smith said to scattered claps from the audience. "The media immediately said 'He's threatening Jena Griswold.' I'm not threatening Jena Griswold. If you violate the law, and you violate a law like treason law, then there are punishments for that."
Smith also addressed the whistleblowing, revealing that he did not discover the passwords on his own. Smith said he was tipped off by state Representative Stephanie Luck and failed House District 38 candidate Jeff Patty, who knew that Smith regularly downloads the office's spreadsheets and were informed by an unidentified party that there were hidden passwords in one of the files.
"I don't think anybody has any idea what the election results have been in Colorado for twenty years," Shawn Smith told a crowd of about seventy people.
Hannah Metzger
Smith called for a return to hand-counting ballots and in-person voting only, a demand echoed by the other speakers. He also said Griswold should be prosecuted for "election crimes," though he did not lay all of the blame at her feet.
"I uncharitably called Jena Griswold a meat puppet and meant it," Smith said. "She is probably one of the dumbest people to ever hold office in the state of Colorado."
The election fraud conspiracy goes much deeper than Griswold or Colorado, GOP speakers claimed. Cook alleged that the FBI, CIA, Department of Homeland Security and other government agencies "psychologically condition the public to expect the [election] results they're about to manipulate."
He says these shadow government figures use voter registration information, social media activity and early voting results to "figure out how many votes they need to inject in order to" make elections go to their preferred candidate.
"It's a magic show. You're getting played," Cook said. "You've been fed an illusion. We are operating in a world that is different than what a lot of people think it is. There is something else going on in the background. ... I've got no more Fs to give. I'm on a warpath to expose all of this."
Oltmann, a conservative political activist and owner of DCF Guns, also spoke at Tuesday's event via Zoom. He's best known for his violent political rhetoric calling for the mass execution of politicians, including Governor Jared Polis. Most recently, he made headlines for calling for the execution of President Joe Biden in March over Biden's support for an assault weapons ban — a comment that Oltmann partially walked back on Tuesday.
"I didn't call for violence. I said he should be tried for treason, and if he's found guilty he should face the penalties — which, by the way, is death," Oltmann said.
While Colorado voters largely resisted the red wave that hit the rest of the country during the November election — Vice President Kamala Harris won the state — GOP candidates managed to flip Congressional District 8, take three state House seats to end the Democratic supermajority and make gains on the state Board of Education and RTD board. In addition, their presidential candidate, Trump, won a decisive victory over Harris.
Darcy Schoening, director of special initiatives for the Colorado GOP, highlighted these achievements at the beginning of the event: "The liberal media is lying to you," she proclaimed. "The Republican Party made massive gains in Colorado and will continue to do that."
How does that align with the speakers' insistence that the state election, national election and perhaps all elections for the last two decades were fraudulent?
"I don't think that we know yet how to feel," Schoening tells Westword. "They ask valid questions. ... We're just looking for answers."
