Some of our voting laws are actually working

Mesa County Clerk Peters under arrest

There continues to be bad news about voting restrictions.  The Brennan Center for Justice reported in January that last year, at least 19 states passed 34 laws restricting voter access.  This year, at least 13 bills that would restrict voting have been pre-filed for the 2022 legislative sessions in four states.  At least 152 anti-voting rights bills have already carried over from 2021 to 2022 in 18 more states. 

That’s a lot of bad bills in a lot of states.  The Brennan Center reported that more voting restriction laws were passed in 2021 than in any year since the organization began keeping records in 2011.

But one aspect of voting that doesn’t get much coverage concerns laws that are already on the books.  The Brennan Center doesn’t have a data base on state voting laws so you can just look them up, but in recent weeks there has been coverage in at least one state of investigations of local election officials for breaking laws already on the books.  That state is Colorado, where at least three county clerks have been under investigation by the office of the Secretary of State for various election law violations.

In Mesa County, Colorado, a deputy county clerk was arrested for illegally entering a state DMV office and attempting to print out official documents from secure office computers.  She was using the credentials of the elected County Clerk, Tina Peters, to access the restricted information.  This deputy clerk and another had been barred from participating in last year’s elections because they had been accused of helping the County Clerk breach the security of election equipment.  A copy of the county’s election system hard drive as well as county voting system passwords were published on a right-wing website in August of 2021.  This was the alleged violation of the law in the state of Colorado which led to the investigation of Peters and the other two women.    

On Monday of this week, the FBI executed search warrants on Peters and the homes of three of her deputies seeking evidence about the breaches in election security in Mesa County.  Last year, a judge in Colorado prohibited Peters from overseeing elections in Mesa County in 2021 and another lawsuit is pending that seeks the same order for 2022. 

One of the people whose home was searched by the FBI was the former campaign manager for gun-toting Representative Lauren Boebert.  All the election equipment in the county was ordered replaced by the Secretary of State because of the security breach caused by Peters and her associates.  Mesa County is in Boebert’s 3rd Congressional District.

Peters quickly made an appearance on Lindell TV, an online channel run by My Pillow Guy Mike Lindell.  Peters also appeared at Lindell’s looned-out “election security” extravaganza in South Dakota ahead of the election in 2020.  She claims she was attempting to uncover proof that the 2020 election was rigged.  That election, of course, happened more than a year ago, and no proof has ever emerged that there were any violations of election security anywhere in the country.  In fact, lawyers for Donald Trump lost 60 lawsuits in battleground states trying to prove the election was “stolen” from Trump.

"I am more scared than ever for my life, but courage is the key when you do something in spite of fear," Peters claimed on Lindell’s show. "I feel that if I was to give up now, I would be giving up on our country. You do the right thing and you see your government come down on you like that, this is the worse nightmare you can imagine.  They (the government) want to shut me up, shut me out, prosecute me, do whatever they can to villainize and demonize me just to cover up their dirty deeds," she told Lindell.  "I can't unsee what I've seen."

The County Clerk of Mesa County has “seen” nothing whatsoever.  There is no proof that votes were changed or illegally cast in the election of 2020 there or anywhere else, for that matter.

A total of three county clerks are currently under investigation in Colorado for allowing unauthorized people to have access to voting records or for copying voting machine hard drives trying to prove that Dominion Voting Systems machines were somehow compromised in 2020.  My Pillow Guy Lindell appears to be funding the legal team representing the county clerks.

All of this action in Colorado involves alleged violations of voting laws that were already on the books.  All the way across the country, laws in the states of New Jersey and Connecticut make it illegal to tamper with voting machines or allow unauthorized access to voting records.  I haven’t looked at other state laws, but I can’t imagine that it isn’t illegal in every state.  It is a federal crime to commit the same acts in a federal election for president or congress.  It is also a federal crime to illegally refuse to permit a qualified person from voting or to refuse to tabulate that vote and report it properly along with all other votes. 

In Connecticut, it is a Class D Felony to tamper with a tabulator (a voting machine) or to cause it to fail to accurately count all votes, or to remove a tabulator or ballot or cause either to not perfectly and accurately register all votes.

The same kinds of acts are illegal in the state of New Jersey, where it is also illegal to inspect a ballot that has been cast or to carry it away from a polling place or to hinder a voter from properly and accurately voting.  It is also illegal to change a ballot or a vote otherwise recorded, or to remove or destroy ballots or poll lists, or to interfere in any way with officials conducting an election, or with citizens attempting to vote. 

I looked through many, many, many other voting laws in both states, way too many to list here.  Suffice to say, the voting laws in both Connecticut and New Jersey are robust and comprehensive. 

Last week, the Mesa County Clerk, Tina Peters, was arrested in a restaurant when she resisted police who were serving a search warrant for an iPad she had illegally used in court to record a hearing for one of her deputy clerks who had been suspended and was under investigation for her role in copying and publishing hard drive data from county voting machines.  Peters screamed at and fought with police and had to be handcuffed for the iPad to be taken from her.  She is also under investigation for illegally accepting gifts from the My Pillow Guy in the form of free rides on his personal jet and hotel accommodations when she appeared at his “voting security” extravaganza in North Dakota. 

There are plenty of laws out there that protect voting in every state, plenty of laws that protect the counting of votes and securing election data such as hard drives from voting tabulators, and plenty of laws that prohibit election officials from interfering with voting systems, voting records, and voters themselves. 

In Colorado those laws are being enforced as we speak.  Voters in multiple states have been indicted and convicted for double-voting, among them Republicans seeking to cast extra votes for Trump in the last election.  If voting laws like those in Colorado, Connecticut and New Jersey are enforced elsewhere, elections will be more secure, and all votes cast will be accurately accounted for.  All hope is not lost, folks, when one of Lauren Boebert’s county clerks is cuffed and shoved into the back seat of a squad car outside the place where she was happily lunching with her friends.