‹‹ Purplish

Tina Peters is headed to trial – how did we get here?

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49min 16sec
POY-2022-APRIL-TINA-SMITH
Hart Van Denburg/CPR News
Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, at the time a Republican candidate for Secretary of State, at the Colorado Republican State Assembly Saturday, April 9, 2022. She lost her primary battle to former Jefferson County Clerk and Recorder Pam Anderson. Peters has long been a champion of false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. She was arrested earlier this year on 10 counts of tampering with election equipment and official misconduct related to her alleged efforts to try to uncover fraud involving the voting machines in Mesa County. Peters continues to defend her actions and maintains she did nothing wrong. Reports based on the hard drives of those machines have been debunked.

The Mesa County clerk is accused of breaching the security of her office's election computers in order to hunt for evidence of massive fraud. How did Peters, a political novice who ran on lowering DMV wait times, become such a pivotal figure in the ongoing campaign to prove false claims that American elections are rigged?

This episode of Purplish also published as part of CPR's podcast, Colorado In Depth. It was written and edited by Rachel Estabrook and produced by Shane Rumsey.