Three years after being accused of tampering with voting machines, former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters heads to trial

Editor's Note: CPR is covering each day of the Peters' trial. You can find our latest coverage and catch up on past days here.

The long-awaited trial of former Mesa County clerk Tina Peters begins Wednesday in a Grand Junction courtroom.

Peters is accused of allegedly tampering with her county’s voting machines in search of election fraud. Her trial may provide a deeper look into efforts by supporters of former president Donald Trump — both in Colorado and nationally — to find proof to back up his claims of a stolen election.

Since her actions first came to light three years ago, Peters has repeatedly insisted she was just doing her job by looking into concerns she and her constituents had about the voting machines. 

“I started having citizens come to me and tell me that something didn't seem right, something didn't seem right in our local city council elections,” she told a group of supporters in 2022. “Something didn't seem right in our county from years ago to the 2020 election. And they wanted answers. And I said, ‘You know what? If there's a, there, there we'll find it.’”

Prosecutors argue Peters committed identity theft and violated her oath of office when she helped an unauthorized person gain access to Mesa County’s Dominion Voting System machines during an annual system upgrade. Copies of the hard drives and pictures of passwords were leaked publicly in 2021 and data logs from the machines have been used in reports that purport to show security vulnerabilities and fraud. 

Post-election audits consistently demonstrate that Colorado’s paper ballots are counted accurately and the local district attorney debunked the claims of fraud, but Peters’ actions have made her a celebrity of the election denial movement. In 2022, Mike Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow, held a rally for Peters outside the state capitol during her failed bid for the GOP nomination for secretary of state. 

Colorado election officials have long been frustrated with actions by one of their own

The first word that something unusual had happened in the Mesa County Clerk’s office came with a press release from Secretary of State Jena Griswold in August of 2021. Griswold announced that due to a security breach, the county’s election equipment could not be used for the upcoming fall vote. 

“She is someone who was in a position to uphold elections for the residents of Mesa County and really just turned her back to that duty,” Griswold told CPR News recently. 

“I am glad to see this trial move forward and it is a long time in coming. I wish it would've happened sooner. But at the end of the day it’s here.” 

Hart Van Denburg/CPR News

The trial has been postponed numerous times, most recently in February when Peters fired her attorneys just days before it was scheduled to start. 

Peters has argued that everything she did fell within the power of her office to oversee elections. But Colorado’s bipartisan Clerks Association has been highly critical of her. Executive Director Matt Crane, a Republican former clerk himself, said Peters has been a “useful idiot for bad actors” nationally. 

“It was all for a lie. The most tragic thing about this. Tina's potentially looking at jail time here because she was brainwashed or duped into doing something that has no basis in truth,” Crane told CPR News. 

He said there is nothing nefarious in the voting machines and dismissed claims made by Peters that the post-election software update put them out of compliance with federal law. 

“There weren't records that were deleted that were supposed to be kept for retention. All of that's a lie,” said Crane. “Tina has been a useful idiot for these bad actors, and she's going to be the one to go to jail, not them. Now, do I feel bad for her? No.” 

Crane describes Peters as a willing participant in the conduct and he hopes criminal consequences in her case might deter others from taking similar actions that undermine trust in elections. 

Peters has already faced some repercussions. The courts barred her from overseeing any further elections after the breach came to light, finding that she failed in her duty. In 2022, she dropped her reelection bid to try for Secretary of State but lost in the GOP primary by fourteen points.

Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite

With another presidential election looming, those concerned by Peters’ actions say it’s important that she’s finally going to trial. 

“Because ultimately you do want people to know that there are criminal consequences,” said Republican former Secretary of State Wayne Williams, who was appointed to help oversee elections in Mesa County before Peters left office. 

By a twist of coincidence, election officials from across Colorado will be in Grand Junction during part of her trial, gathering there for their annual summer conference. Because of term limits and turnover, only about a third of the state’s current elected clerks served in office at the same time as her.

Fremont County Clerk Justin Grantham, a Republican and a former chair of the Colorado County Clerk's Association, doesn’t anticipate many of his colleagues will attend the court proceedings in person, in part out of fears that their safety could be in jeopardy from Peters’ supporters. But he said that doesn’t mean they won’t be paying attention. 

“I don't want to say ‘excitement’ because that's not the right word, but we're definitely anxious to get this done and over with,” said Grantham. 

He said the trial may also have implications for clerks’ authority in the future. For instance, if the jury agrees with Peters that it was within the bounds of her job to allow image captures of her machines’ software, that could lead to challenges to a state law making such things illegal. 

“In the county governments, in the elections offices, the clerks themselves, this really could determine some laws and how we do certain things,” said Grantham.