What Can Occur When An Election Official Believes The Huge Lie

9 months after the 2020 election, the decision got here in. The Colorado secretary of state’s workplace was on the cellphone and wished to know why the passwords for Mesa County’s election gear had been on the web for anybody to see. However the powers that be in Mesa County didn’t even know the passwords had leaked. 

“We’re saying, ‘What are you speaking about?’” recalled Mesa County Commissioner Scott McInnis.

Photographs of screens displaying the passwords had been shared just a few days earlier on the chat app Telegram by a QAnon chief. The Colorado secretary of state launched an investigation and issued an order for Tina Peters, the county clerk, to allow them to examine the gear and attempt to resolve what occurred. 

However there was an issue. Peters wasn’t in Mesa County. She was on her method to South Dakota for a “Cyber Symposium” hosted by Mike Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow and probably the most distinguished peddlers of the Huge Lie. Information from Mesa County election gear laborious drives had been later displayed on the symposium. The person speaking about them was that very same QAnon chief — Ron Watkins — the previous administrator of the message board the place Q, the shadowy determine behind the QAnon conspiracy motion, posted the majority of their posts. Watkins is so deeply entangled with QAnon that many consultants imagine he could have been Q himself.

As of late, Peters is again in Mesa County. She needs to be. She will’t go away the state after being lately indicted by a grand jury on 10 counts, together with seven felony fees, for allegedly utilizing a false id and mendacity to state workers whereas permitting an unauthorized particular person to make copies of the election gear laborious drive. After I visited final month, I discovered her on the Hilton DoubleTree in Grand Junction — the county seat — the place she was attending the county GOP Meeting to marketing campaign for her spot on the first poll. She’s now operating for secretary of state. There, sitting on a patio along with her shiny white bob glowing within the solar, she advised me that her choice to repeat the election gear laborious drives was not solely allowed however required. And he or she believes these copies have revealed severe vulnerabilities within the county’s election gear.

“If I would like someone to come back in and protect my election information, that’s my function, and that’s my responsibility,” Peters mentioned. “That’s what I did.” 

However the way in which she selected to go about “preserving” these information has wrought havoc on Mesa County and on Peters herself. Addressing the fallout of her actions, together with having to interchange election gear deemed compromised by the state, has price greater than $1 million of tax-payer cash, in accordance with McInnis. Her actions additionally led to the indictment fees, for which she faces as much as 28 years in jail and $2.7 million in fines, with the potential for extra fees coming. And it has sown additional distrust within the election system amongst voters, all whereas failing to unearth any precise proof of election fraud. 

Peters’s story is wild. It begins with an after-hours backup of the laborious drives straight out of a heist film and likewise consists of switched-off safety cameras, the MyPillow man and Peters donkey-kicking a cop in a bagel store (once I spoke with Peters, she obtained out of her seat to reveal the way it was unintentional). It’s a singular sequence of occasions. However it might even be a preview of what’s to come back for different communities throughout the nation. It’s a cautionary story of what occurs when these charged with overseeing our elections imagine within the Huge Lie. And with scores of Huge Lie-believing candidates looking for workplaces massive and small this yr, there’s an opportunity your group may change into the subsequent Mesa County.

There are doubtless a whole lot of would-be Tina Peterses all throughout the nation — candidates operating for elected workplace within the midterm elections who imagine, to various extents, that the 2020 election was rife with fraud, regardless of all their proof being categorically debunked. In Texas alone, 43 Huge Lie-endorsing candidates have run within the state’s congressional and gubernatorial races to this point. Election fraud believers are additionally operating for much less high-profile jobs that might give them affect over elections: secretary of state, legal professional common and, sure, county clerk.

Getting such candidates elected to those positions is an explicitly acknowledged aim of among the greatest promoters of the Huge Lie. Steve Bannon, the previous Donald Trump strategist whose podcast performed a key function in spreading the election fraud principle (and who himself was indicted on fees of contempt of Congress for refusing to testify to the Home committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol), has promoted these candidates on his podcast and harassed the significance of voting for his anointed picks. 

“We’re taking this again village by village,” Bannon mentioned on an episode final summer season. “The place the power is, is taking these faculty boards again. The place the power is, is precinct committeemen, folks signing as much as throw out the GOP institution.”

Peters, for her half, wasn’t at all times a voter fraud conspiracist. When she was elected in 2018, there was little speak of elections. Her predominant platform level was a pledge to reopen two DMV workplaces. 

“[The race] was solely targeted on motor autos greater than it was elections,” mentioned Bobbie Gross, Peters’s opponent within the GOP major that yr and one of many candidates operating to interchange Peters as county clerk this yr. 

And even straight following the 2020 election, Peters advised me she trusted every thing had gone easily. When folks began coming to her with questions and allegations of fraud, she mentioned she didn’t assume there was something to them.

“I mentioned, ‘You recognize what? Convey me what you have got, we’ll test it out,’” Peters mentioned. “Now, in my thoughts, I’m pondering we’ll simply debunk it and we’ll clarify how that may’t be attainable.” 

However one thing began to erode Peters’s prior perception that the county’s elections had been safe. As early as January 2021, Peters tweeted election fraud conspiracies from a private account, claiming that it’s attainable to “tabulate ballots greater than as soon as favoring a candidate” and to “change algorithm in a voting machine.” Then in April, when essentially the most staunchly conservative candidates within the Grand Junction Metropolis Council race didn’t win, Peters was stunned. “After I pulled the tallies at 7 p.m. for the municipal election, I used to be shocked. I used to be shocked,” Peters mentioned. “I went, ‘There’s no means.’” 

After all, election surprises occur on a regular basis. Whereas Mesa County as a complete is comfortably purple, Grand Junction itself has grown extra reasonable over the previous few years, even leaning blue in some neighborhoods. The candidates who gained additionally largely had extra expertise with native authorities, and lots of sources with data of Mesa County politics advised me there was nothing stunning concerning the outcomes of the race. 

Two weeks after the town council election, Peters requested her employees attend a presentation by Douglas Frank, a highschool math trainer from Ohio who was touring the nation making claims of election fraud. It was round this time that the secretary of state’s workplace knowledgeable county clerks that they had been planning to conduct what’s referred to as a “trusted construct,” a safe however routine in-person replace of the software program on all election gear within the state that takes place in a lull between elections. The replace requires the presence of workers from the secretary of state’s workplace, the native county clerk’s workplaces and Dominion — the producer of the voting machines for many counties in Colorado, together with Mesa County. As a part of the preparations, each county was required to again up all election information previous to the replace to ensure no vital info was misplaced.

Peters was making her personal preparations. On Might 17, eight days earlier than the replace was to happen, Peters’s deputy clerk, Belinda Knisley, requested that the safety cameras within the election workplaces be turned off. Whereas authorized, a number of sources advised me the cameras weren’t usually turned off.

Peters has been forthcoming about the truth that she made backups of the election gear laborious drive. She additionally confirmed that she had the safety cameras turned off. However she’s much less open to talking about exactly the way it all went down from there. When requested if anybody helped her make the backups, she advised me: “I don’t wish to actually discuss that, as a result of that’s beneath investigation.”

The indictment towards Peters alleges that the Sunday earlier than the replace was to happen, three safety badges had been used whereas accessing secured election workplaces. A kind of badges belonged to Peters, one other to an elections supervisor who would later be fired, and the final to a person named Gerald Wooden, who had solely been employed as a temp employee the week earlier than and who says he wasn’t there that day. Then, on the day of the replace, workers of the secretary of state’s workplace and Dominion testified that Peters launched a clerk’s workplace worker as Gerald Wooden. However, once more, Wooden mentioned he wasn’t there that day and offered an alibi to again it up. Peters has been charged with, amongst different issues, id theft and felony impersonation.

“It’s virtually like a miniature Watergate,” mentioned McInnis.

I emailed Peters an in depth record of follow-up questions on these particular allegations within the indictment, however she didn’t present a response previous to publication.

In August, Watkins — the QAnon man — made the info from these laborious drive copies obtainable on-line, proper after he leaked the photographs and movies that included the Mesa County passwords. Watkins didn’t reply to questions despatched to him through his lawyer.

The leak prompted the secretary of state’s workplace to start an investigation, which revealed the poll tabulation machines had been compromised and wanted to be decertified and changed on the county’s expense. The secretary of state additionally filed a petition to have a decide strip Peters and Knisley of their authority to supervise the November 2021 election.

“I’m blissful to stroll by way of what an election report is and what it isn’t. However mendacity to my workplace, permitting unauthorized entry to voting gear, leaking delicate passwords that management the motherboard of the whole voting gear and compromising voting gear shouldn’t be allowed,” mentioned Jena Griswold, Colorado’s secretary of state, in an interview. “That creates a safety threat.”

Peters, in the meantime, maintains that it was completely authorized for her to make copies of the laborious drive and that her actions have helped reveal vulnerabilities within the election system. The laborious drive copies had been analyzed by two folks with connections to Lindell, a software program developer and a former cybersecurity strategist. They put collectively a collection of stories alleging the replace had led to the deletion of vital election information, and revealed safety weaknesses within the poll tabulation machines. The stories have been reviewed by consultants who say they fail to truly present what they allege.

What the stories do present is that there could be a safety threat to the poll tabulation machines, however provided that somebody has bodily entry to the machines — that are solely accessible to licensed people who’ve undergone background checks and have entry to the locked space the place the machines are positioned, and who’ve entry to the passwords — as Peters is alleged to have allowed.

“Typically, it’s almost inconceivable to make a contemporary Home windows laptop safe towards someone who has bodily entry to the machine,” Robert Graham, a cybersecurity professional who had reviewed Peters’s stories, mentioned in an electronic mail.

After the leak, the Mesa County district legal professional started an investigation into the alleged safety breach, as did federal investigators with the FBI, who later raided the properties of Peters, Wooden and two different people. This January, a grand jury was tasked with contemplating the findings of the DA’s investigation. Peters introduced she was operating for secretary of state the next month, however in March, the grand jury indicted Peters on 10 counts, together with felony impersonation, try and affect a public servant, and id theft. If discovered responsible of all fees, Peters may very well be sentenced to as much as 28 years in jail and face $2.7 million in fines. She has no plans to droop her secretary of state marketing campaign.

Tina Peters obtained two full standing ovations on the Mesa County Republican Meeting final month. The one different one that garnered such widespread assist was Rep. Lauren Boebert, the gun-toting, pro-Trump freshman member whose district consists of Mesa County. (Boebert declined to talk with me for this story however had beforehand launched an announcement supporting the district legal professional’s investigation.) On the earth of Huge Lie believers and the far proper, Peters has change into one in all a small solid of folks heroes. And whereas she’s the one going through felony fees, the most important names within the Huge Lie circuit, equivalent to Lindell and Bannon, are more than pleased to make use of her story to additional their very own ambitions. Following the symposium, Peters went into hiding for a month with Lindell’s assist and didn’t return to Mesa County till mid-September.

In the meantime, the county commissioners have executed their greatest to scrub up the mess on their palms. To attempt to restore belief within the election course of forward of an election final fall, the commissioners applied further verification measures: They employed Clear Poll, one other licensed election gear vendor and Dominion’s chief competitor, to re-count all of the ballots that had been run by way of the Dominion machines. After which they did a hand depend. Neither depend confirmed main discrepancies — the Dominion counts had been correct. The commissioners are additionally within the means of anonymizing all ballots with the intention to add them on-line in order that voters can confirm the vote totals themselves. They’re even planning to refurbish the room the place election gear is saved to have larger home windows and permit election-watchers a greater view of the counting course of, in accordance with McInnis.

“This factor has price this little county at the least $1 million. It’s going to be $1 million-plus, and we haven’t turned up one fraudulent vote. Not one,” McInnis mentioned. The majority of the fee got here from changing the gear, implementing the extra safeguards, personnel, and diverting sources from different departments, in accordance with McInnis. For context, that represents roughly a 3rd of the county clerk’s workplace’s complete annual price range for 2022.

But none of these efforts have swayed Peters or her followers, who’re nonetheless suspicious of the election gear in Mesa County, even supposing Trump gained the county in 2020 by 28 factors.

“To my chagrin, it has not appeased hardly anyone,” mentioned Cody Davis, one other county commissioner.

On the GOP Meeting, a number of Republican social gathering delegates expressed doubt and mistrust within the election system and praised Peters. Two people who refused to offer me their names advised me Peters is a “hero.”

“My intestine tells me, ‘Why would anyone of their proper thoughts put themselves by way of what she’s put herself by way of simply to place herself by way of it?’” mentioned Melissa Anchondo, who was attending the meeting. “I feel she’s harmless. I feel she’s nice. I hope folks can begin to understand what’s happening.”

“There’s an terrible lot of questions, and I feel if you happen to ask most people right here I’ll guess most would say they don’t imagine the election was honest,” mentioned David Dearborn, a delegate on the meeting. 

One of many delegates who refused to offer me her identify mentioned, “She is a hero and she or he’ll go down in Colorado historical past as being a hero for all of the voters towards the corruption of Dominion voting machines.”

Kevin McCarney is presumably essentially the most Republican man I’ve ever met. In the midst of our one-hour dialog, most of which was targeted on Peters, McCarney managed to get in feedback about his perception within the Second Modification, his anti-abortion views, and make a dig at soon-to-be Supreme Court docket Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. As chair of the GOP in Mesa County, a county that hasn’t elected a Democrat since 1964, McCarney mentioned he has typically been accused of being “too conservative.” However even he has been annoyed by what Peters did.

“I don’t like being a babysitter, and that’s what I’ve been the final six months due to the Tina scenario,” McCarney mentioned.

There are lots of Republicans in Mesa County — that is, in spite of everything, the area of the nation that elected Boebert, probably the most conservative and bombastic members of Congress. Practically each elected official I spoke to for this story, together with the county commissioners, the candidate operating to interchange Peters as clerk, and the county treasurer (who was tasked with serving to run final yr’s election after Peters was stripped of her duties) was a Republican. All of those stalwart supporters of the GOP have been pressured to reckon with the result of her actions.

In a spot like this, the Republican major for a lot of positions is basically the final election. That was the case in 2018, when Peters, then a neighborhood businesswoman, beat out Gross, a 10-year veteran of the clerk’s workplace, to win the GOP nomination for county clerk, securing the job.

Her first yr in workplace was comparatively uncontroversial, however in 2020, after 574 uncounted ballots had been found in a drop field for an election the earlier fall, a recall effort towards Peters was launched. The recall effort — backed by a number of former workers of the clerk’s workplace, which had seen three-quarters of its employees resign beneath Peters — did not get sufficient signatures to immediate a vote, however the Colorado secretary of state did order an election observer to report on the clerk’s workplace.

A lot of Peters’s GOP colleagues forgave her for that incident, telling me “errors occur.” However they weren’t as forgiving of the alleged choice to permit an unauthorized individual to primarily hack the voting system. McCarney mentioned it has prompted pressure amongst Republicans, between those that assist Peters and imagine there was fraud and those that don’t.

“Now we have a division the place we shouldn’t have division proper now,” McCarney mentioned. “I don’t care if you happen to hate each other, we’re Republicans and we have to band collectively on this election. There are folks right here who’ve drunk the Kool-Support, as I say, and their hatred is palpable towards anyone who disagrees with them.”

It’s additionally pressured Republican representatives to bear heavy critiques from their very own crew. Davis, the Mesa County commissioner, advised me his voicemail was stuffed with messages from indignant voters. He suspects that almost all of them, essentially the most threatening ones, come from folks out of state, as they got here in after his contact info was shared publicly by Lindell and since the people who’ve come out to voice their frustration in individual have largely been well mannered.

“That is what I signed up for,” Davis mentioned. “I get pleasure from partaking with folks. After I can get folks to a room or a espresso desk, I can even have a very good rational dialog with folks. It’s the individuals who gained’t return my cellphone calls, who don’t wish to take heed to me, who simply electronic mail me. They’re enthusiastic about a story, not within the fact.”

After all, Mesa County shouldn’t be made up solely of Huge Lie believers, and elected officers have obtained loads of criticism from constituents who assume the efforts taken to appease those that imagine there was voter fraud are a waste of money and time. McInnis confirmed me an nameless letter calling him “a shame and a humiliation” for not eradicating Peters from workplace. (As an elected official, Peters can’t be faraway from workplace by the county commissioners.)

The turmoil Peters’s actions have prompted for her fellow partisans demonstrates why Republicans, too, must be cautious of the potential for a wave of election truthers being elected to workplace this fall. Whereas it might initially appease the bottom, having an elected official who believes within the Huge Lie can simply go south, serving to those that stand to revenue from the continued erosion of electoral belief. Having somebody “on the within” offers profiteers like Bannon a chance for entry and a supply for purple meat to throw to their viewers. For everybody else, together with Republicans, it’s a catastrophe.

There are nonetheless some questions left unanswered within the Tina Peters story. One of many larger ones is who precisely helped her make the copy of the laborious drive. If the person utilizing the id of Gerald Wooden was actually not Wooden, who was he? There are some theories which were floated, however as of proper now we are able to’t say conclusively.

One other urgent query is what is going to occur to Peters herself. For now, she’s awaiting trial for the fees laid towards her and will face extra fees out of the federal investigation. She’s at the moment going through one other court docket problem from the secretary of state to take away her from overseeing one other election — this time the 2022 midterms. She was given a contempt of court docket quotation for allegedly recording a listening to in a case towards her deputy clerk. And when police tracked her down in a neighborhood bagel store to execute a search warrant for that iPad, she allegedly resisted, resulting in her being positioned in handcuffs and donkey-kicking a cop — so she additionally faces fees for obstruction of a peace officer. After which there are the a number of ethics complaints filed towards her for elevating cash to cowl authorized charges and accepting presents within the type of journey and housing from Lindell.

Peters remains to be operating for secretary of state. And final weekend, she attended the state Republican Meeting, receiving 61 % of the votes.

Huge Lie proponents are at the moment operating for secretary of state, governor and Congress. They’re operating for varsity boards, election boards and county clerks. In the meantime, veteran election officers have been resigning in droves due to the loss of life threats and intimidation lobbed at them by those that imagine they had been complicit in a stolen election. Peters’s story is exclusive, nevertheless it may not be for lengthy.