(CN) — A Colorado judge will decide whether to block embattled Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters from overseeing this year’s elections after she refused to sign an election order from the secretary of state requiring her to follow state law and use the county’s voting machines.
“Clerk Peters must follow the secretary of state,” said assistant attorney general Leeann Morrill. “The idea that it’s a two-way street and clerks can run elections how they want hasn’t been the case since 1963.”
Peters first came under scrutiny in 2021 after leaking voting machine passwords and allowing unauthorized individuals to access machines during a May security update. Videos of the voting machine updates were broadcast over the social media site Telegram and the Gateway Pundit blog.
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold successfully sued to block Peters from participating in the 2021 election, then filed a second lawsuit in January to bar Peters from overseeing the 2022 primary and midterm elections after she refused to sign an state election order.
Following a grand jury investigation, Peters also faces three felony counts of attempting to influence a public servant, four felony counts related to impersonation and identity theft and a misdemeanor count each of official misconduct, violating her duties and failing to comply with the secretary of state’s requirements.
Amid civil and criminal investigations into her conduct, Peters announced in February she was running on the Republican ticket to try to unseat the Democratic secretary of state. Peters will appear on the primary ballot in June.
“If we’re going to spend so much time talking about elections, we have to respect the results as well,” said attorney Scott Gessler, on behalf of Peters.
In urging the court to focus on the present case, rather than the facts of the 2021 security breach, Gessler said Peters had the right to exercise her free speech.
"We’re not backing down. If we don’t get this election irregularity solved, problem solved, there’s not going to be any fair elections," Peters told viewers on a FacebookLive broadcast in January. "We’ve got to get those machines so that they are transparent to the people and they’re not able to do what they’re designed to do.”
Throughout the state’s voting machine investigation and to the present, Peters told supporters she is standing up for what she believes in while citing baseless election fraud conspiracies spread after Biden won the presidency in 2020. What the state perceived as threats to compromise an election, Gessler claimed amounted to mere public criticism.
“Clerk Peters is a public official and she is entitled to criticize election procedures that she thinks are wrong,” argued Gessler who practices with Gessler Blue. “Some people might not like that, but we live in a polarized country. She has that right not only as an elected official, but as a private citizen. Not one of [her] statements indicates that she is planning on breaking the law.”
On rebuttal, Morrill countered that Peters' speech is limited due to her position.
"Clerk Peters does not stand before you today as an individual resident, she is here in her official capacity, and so it is in the interest of the secretary of state’s office to ask her to repudiate certain statements that she has made,” Morrill said.
“Both history and the law have a term for public officials who swear by an oath and then fail to follow it, and that term is faithless,” Morrill said in closing.
The hearing was held at the Mesa County Justice Center and broadcast via Webex. District Judge Valerie Jo Robison, appointed by former Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter, presided over the case. Robison did not indicate when or how she would decide the case, but election deadlines are fast approaching.
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