Sunday, December 10, 2023

Colorado county clerks revolt against GOP election denialism pressure

 This is an excerpt in italics from  a December 9 posting with additional commentary and updated status of the Tina Peter's federal trial scheduled for Febrary 2024

In Colorado, on December 8, 2023, there was an explosive report by Kyle Clark, KUSA,  a local station,  about threats and politics of election denialists that shows how   MAGA lies are used to seize control of the election processes on a local government level.  . Next Conversation: Head of Colorado's County Clerks Association talks election rigging lies - YouTube  

 This is a prelude to Trump's attempt at the Big Lie again to stay in power if he ever gets elected again, and it is his pretext for Trump loyalists to control the entire election process from registration to voter access, to vote casting, to tabulation, and to reporting at the exclusion of any opponents in the process.  It is the end of free and fair elections if he succeeds is doing this throughout the country, and the attempt is already underway, as this Colorado GOP attempt illustrates.  The message: elections are already corrupt (the Big Lie), not free or fair, so why not put your MAGA buddy in charge. MUFTIC FORUM BLOG: An election denier will now be the Colorado state GOP chair Update 3 12 2023         Note: a critic of the Big Lie, Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO), was a casualty himself. He will not run for re-election in a ruby-red district.

The following comments are my additional ones to the December 9 posting.  Note in  Kyle Clark's interview of the executive director of the County Clerk's Association he and nearly all of the Colorado county clerks are Republicans.  As a former county clerk (Denver)  years ago, that was also the case. (I was usually the lone Democrat).  Party ideology then was simple: do the best job to ensure the voting process goes smoothly and accurately and follow the rules.  Those were low-technology processes back then, and voting machines were the lever type backed up by paper ballots.  In every layer of the process in Denver, representatives of both political parties looked over each other's shoulders to ensure that the rules were followed and the process was honest.(*no longer required, though)  In the time of high tech, in Colorado, those paper ballots are still available for any audits if questions are asked, and recounts that are triggered by a percentage in close races, and still are.  Clerks were proud, and most still are  (with several exceptions in 2020) of being accurate and rule-abiding. To have a state party GOP chair threatening to primary any GOP clerk who is not loyal to MAGA and claim the process for which they were proud and took responsibility is outrageous and insulting, but also a threat to clerk's positions to which they were elected after surviving their primaries ..   As individuals, thanks to the threats of their own party chairs, they could not speak out individually, but their association did. on Clark's broadcast on NBC's Denver affiliate, 9 News..

In my own county, election denialism nearly caused the GOP candidate for the county clerk to lose her election in 2022.. It was a squeaker in a red county blushing a bit purple. She was running to fill the vacancy left by the previous Republican county clerk, respected by both parties who chose not to run again for the office. The candidate refused to say the 2020 election was not fraudulent, but when pressed, she admitted her Republican predecessor had run a clean election. It just was that every other county, by implication, was corrupt because she was MAGA..  In the meantime, seizing national attention was a GOP country clerk, Tina Peters, in Mesa County who had fallen for the national party election denialism, broke the rules, and gave the codes to a Trumpster nonstaff member to seize the county machinery and jeopardize the security and integrity of the vote count, ... 

More on the Tina Peters case: Federal trial schedules in February 2024

Update: 12/10/2023  Tina Peters files federal lawsuit to halt investigations, prosecutions (coloradosun.com)  Peters is facing trial early in 2024 after federal indictments for her actions in 2022.

Update: 2/11/23  New information from the FBI delays the Tina Peters election tampering trial. What is interesting is FBI evidence claiming that the "update of computer systems "was not performed by an employee of the clerk's office" as Peter's claimed but by someone else using a copy of an employee's access key.ttps://www.cpr.org/2023/02/09/tina-peters-trial-delayed/

Tina Peters arraigned on 10 felony, misdemeanor charges in case alleging election equipment breach | Courts | coloradopolitics.com

1 comment:

  1. It is a mystery to me how Magna Republicans are under Trump's spell, not only ih unworthy to serve, he could not even get a job at Krogers

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