Tina Peters waves around a letter to the Colorado Secretary of State at the July 12 Las Vegas conference she attended, demanding a recount of her race in the primary. She failed to meet the deadline last Friday to pay over $236,000 for a state-wide recount. She lost by over 88,000 votes or a margin of over 14% between her and the winner.
For all the bluster Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters made over demanding a recount in her June 28 primary loss, she failed to get the necessary funds in to the Secretary of State by the deadline last Friday to commence the recount, so it won’t happen.
For the state pay for a recount, the difference between the leading candidate’s total votes and the next highest candidate’s total votes must be less than or equal to one-half of one percent (0.5%). Peters lost to her opponent, Pam Anderson, by 88,000 votes, a margin of more than 14% between her and the front runner.
At a speech she gave at a conference of election-denier sheriffs in Las Vegas on July 12 (video), Peters waved around a notarized letter (pdf) to the Colorado Secretary of State that she told the crowd she was sending to demand a recount, claiming without any evidence that she lost because of “extensive malfeasance” in the June 28 primary. She failed to mention ore recognize how her being indicted on 7 felonies related to election tampering might have affected the vote.
There was no fraud or malfeasance in the June 28 primary, and Peters’ loss has been accepted as legitimate.
Baselessly claiming the existence of widespread election fraud and blaming it for election losses is part of a Republican effort to destabilize American democracy and is a Trump-led strategy to set the stage for a broader attack on the right to vote across the country. Republicans have been enacting laws around the country that make it harder to vote, like a law in Georgia that makes it illegal for anyone but election workers to provide food or water to people waiting in line to vote. Some voters in Georgia waited in line for up to 9 hours to vote in 2020.
Most Republican voters in Colorado rejected this extremist strategy, leading to losses for election-denier candidates like Peters.
The people at this conference are not just election deniers but sovereign citizen extremists who believe the sheriff is the most powerful law enforcement entity in any given county.
From the CSPOA “About” page:
“The vertical separation of powers in the Constitution makes it clear that the power of the sheriff even supersedes the powers of the President.”
Delusional? Yes, as evidenced by their choice of speakers. Dangerous? Not really even if you’re running a bootleg copy of Windows.
Peters’ allies get more and more fringe the closer she gets to answering for her crimes. Thanks for keeping up with this.
Unfortunately, they may be more dangerous than you think, they legally get to carry firearms and conveniently are able to turn off their body cams when things get “messy”.
Of course she missed the deadline. She didn’t really want a recount, and she certainly didn’t want to pay for a recount. She wants to be able to complain to those listening that the State of Colorado is hiding the “extensive malfeasance”, and she will point at the lack of a recount as her “evidence”. A recount would have shown her claims to be false, and she would have been out a quarter of a million dollars. This was all for show, so Peters can continue grifting.
Even she doesn’t believe her shtick.
She never has believed her own shtick; like Trump she just has to be -slightly- smarter than her slack-jawed, glassy-eyed, mouth-breathing followers. As you can see by the abundance of chest-thumping, mediocre puns, and belligerent ignorance displayed by her fans here, that’s not a high bar to clear.