Dominion voting machines are only a "ballot marking device" system in which the voter deposits their printed ballot into a box for counting. The disinformation campaign against Dominion led to their employees being stalked, harassed, and receiving death threats. Ron Watkins, a leading proponent of the QAnon conspiracy theory, posted videos on Twitter in early December of a Dominion employee using one of the machines, falsely stating that the employee was pictured tampering with election results. The employee received death threats as a result, and a noose was found hanging outside his home. Eric Coomer, Dominion's director of product strategy and security, went into hiding soon after the election due to fear for his and his family's safety. He said that his personal address had been posted online, as had those of everyone from his parents and siblings to ex-girlfriends. In one of their lawsuits, Dominion explained they had spent $565,000 on security as a result. After questions about the reliability of the company's systems surfaced during the election, Edward Perez, an election technology expert at the Open Source Election Technology Institute stated, "Many of the claims being asserted about Dominion and questionable voting technology is misinformation at best and, in many cases, they're outright disinformation." During the 2021 German federal election, the Center for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy found that accusations of Dominion engaging in voter fraud were common among German far-right users of Telegram, despite the company's technology not being used in German elections. In September 2022, officials in Fulton County, Pennsylvania, filed a lawsuit against Dominion, alleging that a third party computer forensics expert had discovered a Python script infection on one of its voting machines, and that there was evidence that the machine had been connected to an external system located in Canada. Defamation lawsuits For similar legal actions see Smartmatic defamation lawsuits Coomer lawsuit On December 22, 2020, lawyers representing Eric Coomer, Dominion's director of product strategy and security (who had been forced to go into hiding due to death threats), filed a defamation lawsuit on his behalf in the state of Colorado. The filing stated that the "false and baseless" claims against him have caused "immense injury to Dr. Coomer's reputation, professional standing, safety, and privacy." Among those named in the lawsuit were the Trump campaign, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, conservative commentator Michelle Malkin, and Colorado businessman and activist Joseph Oltmann. Additionally, conservative media