This article is by local journalist Sharon Sullivan and was posted July 17, 2025. It is reprinted with permission from the Colorado Times Recorder.
Ohio math teacher-turned election conspiracy theorist Douglas Frank returned to Mesa County this week. Frank spoke at a July 14 Stand For The Constitution meeting at Appleton Christian Church in Grand Junction.
“It’s good to be in a church, Frank told the audience of around 75. “A lot of places I go, no church will host me – they’re terrified.”
In 2021, Frank’s election fraud conspiracy theories helped convince former clerk Tina Peters to commit multiple felonies related to breaching her own secure voter data. Frank travels the country soliciting subscribers to his debunked theory that elections are rigged by state officials and that counties need to control electoral processes. Frank claims he can accurately predict voter turnout in every county in the United States and that state officials are purging or inflating voter rolls, and stuffing ballots to change election outcomes. Frank invoked God and war multiple times during his two-hour presentation.
Stand for the Constitution, which counts at least two Mesa GOP central committee (“bonus”) members, Nova Tucker and Tom Keenan, among its own leaders, has promoted election denialism since 2021. The meeting began with a prayer, followed by the group reciting the pledge of allegiance, then the singing of the National Anthem.
Frank is the former chair of the math and science department at a school for gifted children in Ohio. His YouTube channel features analyses of the 2020 election in battleground states and interviews with MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell. The Poynter Institute has found Frank’s claims of election irregularities in Michigan to be false. www.politifact.com/personalities/douglas-frank/
“I am a math teacher for high IQ kids,” Frank said. “I get to teach the brightest kids in the country. I’m a real scientist. It’s important to know that.”
Frank criticized Republicans of not being organized, or working together.
“I have a strategy that’s working around the country that you guys in Colorado are not doing,” he told the audience. “Your grassroots is kind of a mess. To get more involved, come tomorrow morning” (to a training session held Tuesday morning at Timberline Bank in Grand Junction) to learn strategy and form teams seeking evidence of local fraud.
“We need to work together,” Frank said. Working alone is like “one sniper against the enemy” he said. “We have to form a war council, a strategy; we’re at war. We’re all sitting on our hands as spectators instead of engaging in war.”
Frank uses algorithms and analysis to come to his conclusions regarding how elections should turn out, and has compared his efforts to Jesus.
Frank said Lindell made a movie about him after learning he had evidence of election fraud, and that the movie made him “famous.”
“I started getting calls – 70 messages- from around the country to come help. I prayed to God to tell me what to do; which message to answer.”
He said he was able to convince former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters that ballots belonging to “dead” people were being cast in Mesa County. Consequently, she involved her office in an elaborate scheme to try and prove that election machines in Mesa County were somehow faulty.
In August, Peters was convicted of four felonies, and three misdemeanors related to a 2021 security breach in the elections office she oversaw. She was found guilty by a jury of Mesa County residents, a population that voted decisively for President Donald Trump in 2020. She is currently serving a nine-year prison sentence.
Peters is appealing the verdict. Trump has called the former clerk an “innocent Political Prisoner,” and is calling for the U.S. Department of Justice to “take all necessary action” to release her.
Frank claims he could have provided evidence of Peters’ innocence, but was rejected as a witness at a pretrial conference.
Mesa County’s front-end elections manager Stephanie Wenholz testified during the trial that Peters, who was her boss at the time, mandated all elections staff to attend an April 23, 2021 elections conspiracy presentation by Frank at a Grand Junction hotel. She described the atmosphere as similar to a revival and was uncomfortable attending the event.
“I felt my safety was in jeopardy while I was there,” she testified.
The Colorado Times Recorder reported on that presentation, which, like this week’s event, was hosted by Stand for the Constitution, the day after it took place.
On Monday Frank told the SFTC audience that the prosecution of Peters was “preposterous” and that what she did was no worse than actions that have been taken at other election offices and that her prosecution was aimed at scaring other county clerks into compliance with state governments.
A man in the audience called out that “Tina Peters was willing to martyr herself,” to which Frank replied, “That’s why we love her.”
One woman in the audience expressed interest in Tuesday’s training, but appeared concern about “not breaking any laws,” which elicited a response from one man that they were under no obligation to follow laws they deem unlawful.
Also attending the meeting was Charles “Chaz” Evanson, husband of Mesa County Valley School District 51 Board member Barbara Evanson. Mr. Evanson, who is running for governor as an unaffiliated candidate, praised Dr. Frank’s presentation as “a fantastic opportunity to hear him speak and connect with others in the community.”
“…they were under no obligation to follow laws they deem unlawful.”
MAGA delusion in a nutshell.