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    • Election-refusing Colorado clerk gets 9 years for machine tampering
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    Election-refusing Colorado clerk gets 9 years for machine tampering

    Vaseline Posted on

    Tina Peters was convicted of seven charges involving tampering with Mesa County’s election machines. The judge in the case told her Thursday that he is confident she would do it again.

    A former Republican county clerk who promoted election conspiracy theories and tampered with voting machines in Colorado was sentenced Thursday to nine years in prison during a hearing in which the judge in the case called her a “charlatan.”

    Tina Peters, who denies that President Joe Biden won the 2020 election against Donald Trump, was found guilty of seven charges in August. These included attempts to influence a public official, conspiracy to impersonate a criminal, official misconduct in the first degree, failure to comply with an order of the Secretary of State and dereliction of duty. Three were felonies and four were misdemeanors.

    Peters, 68, was indicted in March 2022 after prosecutors said she falsely allowed someone to copy access passwords and other files from a secure voting system and post them online, exposing the machines to hackers.

    The county’s machines had to be replaced because data, including passwords for the machines, was all on the Internet. Peters claimed she was unaware the information was being made public.

    “This community has suffered immensely from Ms. Peters’ dishonesty, lack of transparency and refusal to take responsibility,” Mesa County District Attorney Daniel Rubinstein told USA TODAY in August.

    Judge against Tina Peters: ‘You are a charlatan’

    While she was sentenced to prison, Peters did not apologize, according to reports from local TV station ABC 7.

    “I never did anything malicious to break the law. I just wanted to serve the people of Mesa County,” she said during the hearing in Denver.

    Judge Matthew Barrett called Peters one of the most challenging defendants he has ever seen.

    “You’re not a hero. You abused your position – and you are a charlatan who used and continues to use your former position to sell snake oil that has been proven time and time again to be junk,” Barrett said. “Your lies are well documented and these convictions are serious. I’m convinced you would do it again if you could.”

    Connections to other conservative election deniers

    Prosecutors say Peters stole a Mesa County employee’s security badge to help a man MyPillow founder Mike Lindell knew access the county’s voter systems to counter Lindell’s false conspiracies about the validity of the 2020 election results. to help.

    A year before her indictment, Peters appeared in South Dakota at Lindell’s “bizarre election security symposium,” where files from Mesa County’s election system were shown on screen, the Detroit Free-Press, part of the USA TODAY Network, previously reported.

    Prosecutor Janet Drake argued that Peters was “fixated on wanting to be a hero and impress Lindell,” according to KRAK-TV reporting.

    Fernando Cervantes Jr. is a trending news reporter for USA TODAY. Reach him at [email protected] and follow him at X @fern_cerv_.

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