Sacramento County says it doesn’t employ Dominion workers. Where did the rumor start?

And now the “big lie” has reached Sacramento.

Sacramento County elections officials said Friday they have been swamped with calls from people concerned that two Dominion Voting Systems employees are on the county payroll, a claim the county says flat-out is a “lie.”

“These rumors are false,” the county said in a statement released Friday morning. “The genesis of these rumors is still unclear, but due to the prevalence of this rumor, our office is addressing this lie head-on.

“No Dominion employees have ever been or ever will be employed by the Sacramento County Voter Registration & Elections Department.”

County spokeswoman Janna Haynes said the elections office has received at least a dozen calls from people about the false rumor, and that it appears to have spread through Facebook and Twitter and is now spreading to other elections offices in California.

The conspiracy theory’s genesis may have come from the three-day “cyber symposium” in South Dakota, which purported to showcase evidence of fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

One tweet, for example, sent Wednesday by a Twitter user in Virginia claimed the Twitter user discovered the Dominion connection to Sacramento at the election fraud event put on by MyPillow Chief Executive Officer Mike Lindell.

“Why are 2 Dominion Employees working at the Sacramento Board of Elections?” the tweet read. “Just found out and announced on #LindellSymposium!”

Sacramento County said the allegation is flatly false.

The county has used Dominion machines since 2018 and is preparing its regular testing and accuracy procedures in advance of the Sept. 14 recall election aimed at California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

As part of that testing, a Dominion employee was at the elections office Monday to provide advice and will return Monday to continue to advise workers on the machines, the county said.

However, Haynes said the Dominion worker does not touch the machines, and that security around the room holding the machines is so tight that even she does not have access.

“They are not allowed to touch voting equipment, election files, or ballots at any time,” the county said of the Dominion worker.

Haynes also noted that the machines are not connected to the internet, which is part of a months-long conspiracy theory that China, Italy or some other foreign actor hacked into voting machines to change enough votes to allow President Joe Biden to defeat former President Donald Trump in November.

The claims have morphed into bizarre theories that included on suggesting Trump would be “reinstated” as president.

That did not occur. The Constitution does not contain a “reinstatement” clause.

Despite that, Dominion has been pilloried by various conspiracy theorists, right-wing news outlets and Trump supporters, and the company has pushed back hard, filing lawsuits seeking billions of dollars in damages from Trump loyalists like Lindell, lawyer Sidney Powell and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, as well as Newsmax, Fox News, One America News Network and others.

The conspiracy theories are part of what has come to be known as the “big lie,” the notion pushed by Trump that the election was stolen from him.

Haynes said some of the calls officials are receiving come from people who know little about the election process.

“They don’t know what Dominion does,” she said. “They only know the rumors they’ve been hearing since November.”

She noted that the testing process can be viewed by the public through a window at the elections department, and added that masks are required. She also noted that the actual tabulation of votes a would be streamed via video on the Internet for anyone to watch, just as it was for the November election.

This story was originally published August 13, 2021 at 10:14 AM.