Tina Peters, a county clerk who has been charged with seven felonies related to a scheme to surreptitiously copy sensitive voting data, lost her bid for the Republican nomination for Colorado secretary of state on Tuesday, in accordance with The Associated Press.
She was defeated by Pam Anderson, a longtime local election official who served as a clerk and recorder for Jefferson County and as president of the statewide county clerks’ association. Late Tuesday, Ms. Peters was also trailing Mike O’Donnell, a former nonprofit executive who has promoted quite a few falsehoods concerning the 2020 presidential contest.
Ms. Peters is a component of a movement of Trump-inspired Republicans who deny the 2020 election’s legitimacy and are running to be the highest election official of their states, including Jim Marchant in Nevada, Audrey Trujillo in Recent Mexico and Kristina Karamo in Michigan.
Late Tuesday, Ms. Peters declined to concede and argued without evidence that the end result of her race had been manipulated, The Associated Press reported.
Ms. Anderson, against this, has vocally opposed misinformation concerning the 2020 election and has a page on her campaign website dedicated to debunking conspiracy theories about voting machines and the role of Mark Zuckerberg, the founding father of Facebook, in funding elections.
She has, nonetheless, pushed to expand auditing processes performed by local election officials in Colorado.
In Colorado, a former swing state that has leaned toward Democrats in recent times, Ms. Anderson faces what’s prone to be an uphill battle against Jena Griswold, the present secretary of state and a Democrat.
Ms. Peters’s arraignment on 10 criminal charges, including seven felonies, is about for early August. She has pleaded not guilty.
After the 2020 presidential election, Ms. Peters grew suspicious of the national results, and attended an area event where a presentation was delivered by a highschool teacher from Ohio known for spreading false election conspiracy theories.
By May 2021, in accordance with court documents, Ms. Peters was helping orchestrate an operation to repeat voting machine data before and after a software update process often known as a trusted construct, in an try and prove that the machines were faulty.
After her office ordered security cameras shut off in a secured area holding voting machines, court records say, Ms. Peters helped Conan Hayes, a former skilled surfer who had worked with Mr. Trump’s legal team because it challenged the 2020 results, sneak into the trusted construct process under a false identity.
In early August, passwords to the Mesa County election equipment appeared on a QAnon figure’s Telegram channel after which on a right-wing website, resulting in an investigation by the Colorado secretary of state that quickly garnered national attention.
Ms. Peters’s newfound celebrity on the precise soon led to appearances across the conservative media ecosystem, including on the previous Trump aide Stephen K. Bannon’s podcast.
This February, Ms. Peters announced her bid for secretary of state.
In March, she was indicted on 10 criminal counts related to the hassle to repeat voting equipment software, including attempting to influence a public servant, criminal impersonation, conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, identity theft and first-degree official misconduct.
