In Colorado, Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters is now apparently tied to a criminal investigation after an unauthorized person attended a voting machine update session in the county on May 25. Following that occurrence, passwords for Mesa County’s voting equipment were posted on a far-right blog, and it’s “likely that the passwords were collected” during that update session, as a CBS affiliate summarized revelations from Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold on Tuesday of this week. Mesa County District Attorney Dan Rubinstein has started a criminal investigation into the matter, and Griswold herself is also investigating the situation.
Peters recently appeared at an event put on by MyPillow founder/ CEO Mike Lindell, who has spent months promoting false claims that last year’s election was somehow rigged on behalf of Joe Biden. Lindell has even predicted that Trump would be reinstated as president this month because of supposed revelations of imaginary election fraud — but obviously, this theory has not exactly panned out. Now, besides the investigations into what occurred in Mesa County, the county must replace its elections equipment because Peters’s office directed video surveillance to be turned off ahead of that update session, meaning that authorities can not verify the chain of custody of the machines.
Griswold has also revealed that Peters lied to her office regarding the employment status of the unauthorized attendee at that update session. Referring to Peters, Griswold commented as follows, according to a Colorado CBS affiliate:
‘This is troubling for the entire state of Colorado to have someone in a trusted position, literally trusted to protect democracy, allow this type of situation to occur. To be very clear, [the] Mesa County Clerk and Recorder allowed a security breach and by all evidence at this point assisted it.’
According to Griswold, Peters isn’t cooperating with the investigation by the Secretary of State’s office into what occurred. It is clear, however, that the breach did not affect the security of past elections — it simply poses a problem for the integrity of future elections. Around the country, certain Republicans and allies of former President Donald Trump (including Lindell) have pushed the idea that election-related equipment was compromised and would reveal as much if examined. Mesa County has used Dominion-brand voting machines, and Trump allies have repeatedly claimed that Dominion equipment was somehow used to rig the election. Although none of these theories are connected to meaningful real-world evidence of the election fraud that Trump and allies of his claim was responsible for Biden’s win, there’s no indication that they’re going to abandon this nonsense.
