The county clerk of Mesa in Colorado, Tina Peters, "could be in legal trouble" after allowing an unauthorized person into a secure facility during an "upgrade" of the county's voting machines. Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold reported that this unauthorized person then released the passwords for the underlying voting machine software online. As for Peters, she is currently at the Mike Lindell conference, or, as one outlet put it, "in hiding."
Griswold also said that one week before the breach, Peters ordered her staff to turn off the video surveillance system that monitors the voting machines and that it was only recently turned back on. She said her office is still waiting for more information and documentation and hasn't been in contact with Peters since launching the investigation Monday.
Peters is currently out of state for a "cyber symposium" hosted by Mike Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow. Lindell has become a champion of conspiracy theories that the election was stolen from former President Donald Trump. The proof of fraud Lindell said he would reveal at the symposium did not materialize.
There's a certain awful elegance to the "conspiracy theorists" being the people plainly trying to get away with one. The Daily Beast:
During Peters' first year as clerk, in 2019, her office was blamed for leaving more than 570 uncounted ballots in a box, long past an election. Less than a year later, one of her office's drop boxes leaked ballots, sending some floating in the summer breeze. Now Peters has gone underground, reportedly hiding in a safe house provided by Lindell, after she allegedly participated in a breach of Mesa County voting machine data this year. That data soon wound up on conspiracy websites, making Peters a folk hero among the MAGA set and the subject of an FBI investigation.
