Chances are you’ve never heard of Tina Peters. It’s worth taking a moment to get to know her.
Peters used to be the elections chief in Mesa County, Colorado, a slice of rugged beauty perched on the state’s Western Slope.
After the 2020 election, Peters fell in with the tinfoil-hat crowd promoting the phony claim the presidential race was stolen from Donald Trump. In furtherance of that fallacy, Peters allowed an unauthorized person to access voting equipment as part of a crackpot scheme to gather “proof” that Mesa County’s voting machines were rigged.
They weren’t.
But Peters’ conniving made her a celebrity in the upside-down universe that is MAGA world. She jetted around the country as a wingman for Mike Lindell, the My Pillow guy and feather-headed spouter of election-denying nonsense. Trump hailed Peters as “a rock star” for helping further spread his corrosive claptrap.
Finally, in August, Peters’ duplicity caught up with her. She was convicted of seven criminal counts related to the breach of election security and her deceptive actions surrounding the incident. Last week a judge threw not just the book but multiple volumes at the unrepentant former county clerk, rejecting pleas for leniency and sentencing Peters to a whopping nine years in prison.
“You’re as defiant … a defendant at this court has ever seen,” Judge Matthew Barrett said in a tone of righteous anger. Unlike those unfortunate souls who sometimes land in his courtroom, “You are as privileged as they come,” he told the 69-year-old Peters, “and you used that privilege to obtain power, a following and fame.”
“You are no hero,” he went on. “You abused your position and you’re a charlatan who used and is still using your prior position in office to peddle a snake oil that’s been proven to be junk time and time again.”
Barrett’s voice was tightly coiled, as though he was choking back the indignation roiling inside him.
“At bottom, this case was about your corrupt conduct and how no one is above the law,” he admonished Peters. “Our system of government can’t function when people in government think that somehow, some way, the power they’ve been given is absolute in all respects. And that’s where you fell. You have no respect for the checks and balances of government. You have no respect for this court. You have no respect for law enforcement.”
A certain Republican presidential nominee comes to mind. But Peters was the one seated at the defense table, facing her reckoning. The sentence drew a strong ovation from those endeavoring to preserve and protect our wobbling democracy.
“I think it’s important for those who are working in elections today to know that no matter what kind of pressure they get, the law is the law and they need to follow it,” said Lawrence Norden of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. “There’s no reason to believe there isn’t going to be similar pressure on election officials in the future. Similar lies told to them.”
Peters, fortunately, appears to be a dishonorable exception among the nation’s many conscientious, down-the-middle election officials; some of the harshest condemnation she faced came from her peers, including the head of the Colorado County Clerks Association, who testified at Peters’ sentencing.
“She has willingly aided individuals in our country who believe that violence is a way to make a point,” Matt Crane told the court. “She has knowingly fueled a fire within others who choose threats as a means to get their way.” He and his wife and children are among those who’ve been threatened, Crane said.
Soon enough, Barrett and his staff were similarly targeted, facing threats as soon as the judge’s fiery sentencing sermon took off on television and the internet.
Which just goes to show, as if further proof is needed, how poisoned our country has become.
With Trump’s GOP abdicating its leadership responsibility, it has fallen mainly to the courts to hold Peters and other of the ex-president’s enablers to account — whether it’s the $787 million Fox News agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems to avoid trial on its libel claims, the disbarment of Trump’s quack attorneys John Eastman, Jenna Ellis and Rudy Giuliani, or the fines levied against lawyers filing frivolouselection-related lawsuits.
Voters will, of course, render their verdict on Trump four weeks from now. The least we can hope for is an election that’s on the up-and-up.
“This is not going to magically fix everything, that Tina Peters was sentenced, appropriately, for nine years,” said David Becker, who leads the Center for Election Innovation & Research, a group that works to protect voting integrity. “But all of these things collectively might provide a disincentive to bad actors to once again try to undermine legitimate elections and target our public servants.”
Dug in to the bitter end, Peters used her sentencing hearing to once more unspool her wacky theories about how the election was stolen — “fraudulent software,” surreptitious wireless devices, deleted votes blah blah — until the exasperated judge cut her off.
“I’ve let you go on enough about this,” Barrett said. “The votes are the votes.”
Finally facing the consequences for what she’d done, Peters delivered a weepy plea to avoid prison, citing among other things her need for the “magnetic mattress” she’s used for years to help deal with chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia. Tough to find one of those behind bars.
Peters should have thought of that before breaching her public duty, giving voters the middle finger and sacrificing herself on the mantle of Trump’s ego and incessant lies.
Mark Z. Barabak is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, focusing on politics in California and the West.
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