Local Colorado official faces trial following ‘Big Lie’ election conspiracies

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. (CN) — A faithful Republican living on Colorado’s conservative western slope, Tina Peters watched the 2020 presidential results with concern.

Still, as the duly elected clerk and recorder for Mesa County, Peters was confident in the integrity of the election she had overseen. After all, nearly two-thirds of local voters backed then-President Donald Trump that November, also helping to lift Lauren Boebert into Congress.

Fast forward five months later, to April 2021, and Grand Junction voters overwhelmingly rejected the most conservative city council candidates.

Belief in the "Big Lie" about a stolen 2020 election had become a litmus test for Republican Party loyalty — and Peters began to question whether she could really trust the Dominion voting machines in her county. She voiced her concerns to Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, but they went ignored.

With support from others in the “Stop the Steal” movement, Peters took matters into her own hands, obtaining and leaking voting machine data that she thought proved illegal votes had been counted.

The Republican-run district attorney’s office investigated and debunked Peters' theory. Then, the office indicted the 68-year-old local official on 10 counts.

Jury selection started Monday in Peters' trial. The former elections officer faces three felony counts of attempting to influence a public servant, four felony counts related to impersonation and identity theft and three misdemeanor counts for official misconduct, violating her duties and failing to comply with the secretary of state’s requirements.

Prosecutors say that in May 2021, Peters instructed her deputy clerk to turn off security cameras. She then arranged for associate Conan Hayes to observe and photograph the voting machine trusted build, an in-person update process.

Peters also sent data and passwords to Florida-based company CyberTeamUS, allowing them to be posted on the social media site Telegram. In a report published in September 2021, CyberTeamUS detailed what it considered unusual activity and evidence of deleted voting records.

Colorado 21st District Attorney Daniel Rubinstein also a Republican, investigated Peters' claims of election fraud.

Rather than uncovering concerted efforts to change election results, Rubinstein discovered several instances of human error. The omitted records that CyberTeamUS had flagged were not related to the election results.

The security breach prompted Secretary of State Griswold to decertify machines and commissioners shelled out $96,153 on a contract extension to get new machines. Griswold also successfully sued to remove Peters from overseeing upcoming elections, fueling Peters’ narrative that she was unfairly punished for speaking out.

Republican state Representative Matt Soper has listened to an ebb and flow of election fraud concerns from his constituents in Mesa and Delta Counties over the last four years.

“The Tina Peters trial is incredibly historic,” he said in an interview with Courthouse News.

“I believe when people start hearing what actually happened, what she did, I think they will understand that it wasn't about safeguarding the election integrity in the voting systems within Mesa County: There was actually a real crime that took place," Soper said.

The trial, he added, "reminds elected officials everywhere that no person is above the law when they hold public office.”

Incidents like the one in Mesa County are relatively rare.

The Brennan Center for Justice, a liberal public policy group, has counted 17 cases nationwide in which an official tried to help an election denier gain unauthorized access to voting machines. The Department of Homeland Security, meanwhile, found that Peters' actions did not compromise the county’s elections.

“There are several safeguards built into common election systems, such as having Democrats and Republicans work together at each level," Theodore Allen, a professor of computer science at Ohio State University, explained in an interview. "There's a chain of custody, and rules and directives from the secretaries of state, so the system has some protections built into it against insider threats."

Instead, the bigger risk from the Peters case is if it inspires other election workers to violate protocol, said Michael Greenberger, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Denver.

The concern, he said, "is that Tina Peters sets a precedent for other election deniers, who would seek to work in election administration to try to prove the same type of conspiracy.”

Responding to those concerns, the Colorado state legislature in 2022 passed the Internal Election Security Measures Act, barring anyone convicted of election offenses, sedition, insurrection, treason or conspiracy to overthrow the government from overseeing elections in Colorado.

“The greatest susceptibility of our election system isn't that voting machines will be tampered with. There's been no evidence of a systematic conspiracy for voter fraud in that regard,” Greenberger said. “The susceptibility is that people won't trust their election officials — so making sure that we only have people worthy of trust is a good measure.”

Backed by Griswold, the 2022 law also officially prohibits the photographing of voting equipment and makes it a class 5 felony to allow unauthorized access to voting machines. If the law were in effect in 2021, Peters could have faced up to three years in prison and a $100,000 fine for the offense.

Soper, the local Republican representative, voted against the measure because it shifted authority to the state government and away from individual county clerks. He said he thought existing laws adequately allowed Peters to be investigated and charged for the incident.

Still, "it certainly would be appropriate to call it the Tina Peters Bill," he said. "Senate Bill 153 would not have come out but for Tina Peters."

In court and on social media, Peters has continued to claim she is being persecuted for criticizing the government. A community of like-minded election deniers, including MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, have embraced Peters and helped pay her legal fees. They've printed T-shirts and even organized a daily prayer call on her behalf.

Peters declined requests for an interview from Courthouse News. While guest-hosting the Conservative Daily podcast, she invited listeners to join her during the trial and spread the word about juror nullification, a process by which a jury can theoretically refuse to issue a guilty verdict if they think the law itself is unjust.

“This is the year of the whistleblower,” Peters told listeners. “They're coming after me because I exposed this. The deep state all the way up to Merrick Garland — they want to throw me in prison to have the chilling effect on anyone who speaks out against election fraud.”

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