When Dave Williams was elected Colorado Republican Party chairman last year, he insisted the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. He swore off those dastardly voting machines, pledging allegiance to hand-counted paper ballots instead.

Now, as the party barrels toward its state assembly, they’ve jumped into another captivating episode of “All My Ballots.”

In a January plot twist, Williams actively explored using voting machines at the convention. Now, his own people accuse him of cozying up to Dominion Voting Systems — the lead villain in the stolen election conspiracy tales — faster than you can say “hanging chad.”

Case-in-point: Peg Cage, recently ousted as chair of the party’s vote-counting Teller Committee, skewered Williams this week “for seeking the machines” in an open letter. She called his excuses baseless, insisted he appoint someone else to oversee the assembly, and accused him of requiring a non-disclosure agreement.

Enter Williams’ minions at RINO Watch Colorado, who dutifully dismissed news reports that he’d flirted with Dominion machines as “false and defamatory.”

“Williams says that is absolutely not true and the Party will use safe and secure process to include hand counts,” they insisted — a denial echoed by Ron Hanks, chairman of the party’s election security committee.

Oh, really? You might want to ask The Boss for receipts first.

On Jan. 9, Williams personally messaged El Paso County Clerk Steve Schleiker in texts I’ve reviewed.

“Hi Steve, it’s Dave Williams. We need to contract with a clerk to administer paper ballots for the State Assembly on April 6th at the Pueblo Fairgrounds,” the chairman wrote, requesting a quote. “We would be needing ballots for 3500 voters and for them to be counted in machines for quicker results the day of. We would also need ballot boxes.”

El Paso County specifically uses Dominion vote-counting software.

Schleiker promised to crunch numbers and get back with Williams. Party treasurer Tom Bjorklund also texted with Schleiker, who connected Bjorklund with the county’s Dominion representative.

Alas, El Paso couldn’t oblige Williams because the assembly is happening too close to the Republican presidential primary. Not to be deterred, Williams and Hanks chose another voting machine method.

In a Feb. 16 blast email, Hanks promised there would be no “electronic, radio transmitter clickers” at the convention, even though the GOP used them two years prior. Instead, they’d hand-count paper ballots — with a twist.

“In addition, there will be two 1970s-technology optical readers from Scantron used as a preliminary vote count procedure,” Hanks wrote, saying they’d help ensure a “drama-free” assembly for Trump.

“(O)ld-style optical readers, first fashioned in the 1970s, will be used to provide a preliminary count,” he added. “Many people will remember these machines from grade school, when we took multiple choice tests and filled in the bubbles with a soft lead pencil.”

Ah, Scantrons — the John Travolta of vote-counting tech! You can practically feel the excitement oozing from Hanks, eagerly clutching to leisure suits and bell-bottoms.

I can hear Scantrons humming to Bee Gees tunes while tabulating ballots — shimmy-nimmying the night away while restoring the days when eight-track tapes were cutting-edge and computers were the size of Gremlin cars.

It’s like the GOP wants a grand old retro dance party — waving disco balls while desperately seeking to show the kids they’re still hip.

Let’s be real: These space cadets are out to lunch.

Then again, the luddites on the COGOP’s party-planning committee want to go further backwards — rewinding to a time before Teddy Roosevelt was president, when hand-counting paper ballots was king.

“No less than the future of Colorado’s elections, and therefore our government, rests on the party’s ability to prove that no election machines are needed or wanted in Colorado,” Cage wrote. “Chairman Williams has the power right now to give those who elected him in the party a 100% win by saying ‘NO MACHINES’ and conducting a Hand Counted Paper Ballots election — ONLY.”

Here’s the thing: Only 10% of Americans voted on hand-counted paper ballots by 1980 — a trend that plummeted harder than disco’s popularity to less than 1% by 2008.

Back in 1934, political scientists were already shaking their heads at the shoddy, fraud-ridden state of hand-counting, declaring “(p)robably no part of election administration is conducted so poorly as the count of ballots.”

Since then, countless studies spanning decades have underscored the mess that is hand-counting America’s multifaceted ballots — a demonstrably less-reliable approach than automated methods. Last summer, a hand-count experiment in Mohave County, Arizona found a stunning 5.4% error rate — far worse than the federal government’s maximum allowable error rate of .00001% for electronic tabulators.

In the 1800s — when we last universally hand-counted paper ballots — elections were necessarily split over multiple days for federal, state and local jurisdictions. Automation debuted in 1892, slowly phasing out manual counts.

Now, in the 21st century, the Colorado GOP’s leading luddites yearn to hand-count ballots by candlelight once again.

Let’s be serious: With over 200 candidates vying for 70 national convention delegate spots, this is pure absurdity. The whimsical back-and-forth between the 1970s and the 1870s reflects a sad fact: the Colorado Republican Party has become a parody of a ‘70s sitcom.

Good luck peddling cassette mixtapes to millennials and Gen Z in the age of Spotify, Colorado GOP — or convincing anyone to bring back the horse and buggy.

Jimmy Sengenberger is an investigative journalist, public speaker, and longtime local talk-radio host. Reach Jimmy online at Jimmysengenberger.com or on X (formerly Twitter) @SengCenter.