The Election Fraudsters Who Will Follow in Tina Peters’s Footsteps |
The Election Fraudsters Who Will Follow in Tina Peters’s Footsteps
We can debate all day whether Colorado Governor Jared Polis should have commuted her sentence. Meanwhile, state and local officials are openly preparing to meddle in the midterm elections.
Over the last few days, everyone and their Mother Jones has been talking about Tina Peters, the convicted election fraudster, and whether Colorado Governor Jared Polis “did the right thing” in commuting her sentence last week. This debate doesn’t fall along party lines so neatly. The Atlantic’s David Graham called it “a serious mistake” that “weakens the rule of law” and “will encourage those who wish to undermine elections.” Polis’s attorney general, a Democrat, and the head of the state’s county clerk association, a Republican, also criticized the move. Mother Jones’s Jeremy Schulman, meanwhile, said it was the right thing to do, arguing that “nine years is an awfully long time. She is 70 and has already been in prison for more than a year and a half.” And Tommy Vietor of Pod Save America said, “I don’t give a shit. I don’t care. I have so much to be outraged or to worry about.”
But you absolutely should care—not because of the political or legal ramifications, but because she is not an anomaly. There are dozens, if not hundreds of Tina Peterses out there. And they aren’t in jail. They are your elected officials.
Peters’s scheme runs the gamut from shady to very illegal, with some Hollywood espionage sprinkled in. From 2019 to 2023, she was the Mesa County clerk and recorder, a position that oversees local elections, including voter registration, candidate paperwork, polling logistics, and ballot processing.........