Hello, and welcome back to The Franchise!
Election officials in Shasta County — a deep red California county that has been plagued by election denialism and election conspiracy theories since the aftermath of the 2020 election — have decided that it would be a really terrific idea to hire election denier and recently-released-from-prison ex-elections administrator Tina Peters as an … elections consultant.
Just to jog your memory briefly, Peters is the former Mesa County, Colorado elections administrator who was convicted for breaching her own office’s voting equipment in a convoluted bid to somehow find and release evidence of 2020 voter fraud. Peters had been serving a nine-year prison sentence until Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis caved to pressure from the Trump administration and commuted her sentence, making her eligible for parole in June of this year.
Since then, Peters has been making the rounds with her election denier pals, which has included spreading more false claims about election security on Steve Bannon’s podcast and meeting with President Trump in the Oval Office in July.
But her election denial activism post-prison has only ramped up since then. Shasta County election official and resolute election denier Clint Curtis confirmed to The Guardian this week that he plans to hire Peters as an elections consultant. Curtis said Peters, who is currently still on parole, will not have access to the county’s voting machines, but did not specify what exactly her role would be.
This is a terrible idea for a number of reasons. The New York Times reports that it might be a violation of Peters’ parole to leave Colorado. And, most obviously, Shasta County does not need even more election deniers working on the county’s elections. County voters recently approved a problematic ballot measure, known as Measure B, which would ban most mail-in voting in the county and require the hand-counting of ballots, among other conspiracy theory-laced changes to election administration there.
Earlier this month, a Shasta County judge temporarily blocked the measure from going into effect after California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Secretary of State Shirley Weber filed a lawsuit to block the proposal.
California’s Democratic Sens. Alex Padilla (D-CA) and Adam Schiff (D-CA) sent a letter on Wednesday to Democratic California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, expressing “grave” concerns over Peters’ potential involvement in Shasta County elections.
“Given the current environment facing our elections, we write with grave concern over the statements by the Shasta County Registrar of Voters, Mr. Clint Curtis, that he plans to hire former Colorado elections clerk Tina Peters next month, ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, either to replace the current Assistant Registrar of Voters or as a consultant,” the letter reads.
“Ms. Peters, the former County Clerk for Mesa, Colorado, was convicted on seven separate criminal charges, including four felonies, for participating in a scheme to chase election conspiracy theories related to the 2020 election,” it continues. “Since her release, Ms. Peters’ apology has completely failed to demonstrate she has any real remorse for the damage she has caused voters in Colorado and it is clear that she does not belong in a role overseeing any part of our electoral system.”
We will be keeping an eye out on Peters’ “election work” in Shasta County, so stay tuned for more. As always, there’s a lot more to unpack this week.
Let’s dig in.
Todd Blanche Says DOJ Is ‘Not Going to Stop’ Failing Campaign to Seize Voter Rolls
Despite a (staggering!) 23 losses in court in its campaign to seize sensitive voter roll data from the states, the DOJ has confirmed that it’s not going to give up.
For some context, for many, many months now, the DOJ has been trying to force at least 44 states and Washington D.C., to hand over to the Trump DOJ personal identifying voter information including drivers licenses and Social Security numbers.
So far, most states — both Democratic and Republican — have refused to comply with the administration’s demand, which is really just the latest way the administration is attempting to interfere with states’ right to administer their elections and sow seeds of doubt in the election system, including states’ own ability to clean their voter rolls and check for accidental noncitizen registrants. In response, the DOJ has sued 30 states and has lost every case that has gone to court.
The DOJ has never given a good reason for why they need this data, but they have insisted that, per provisions from the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) and the Civil Rights Act of 1960 (CRA), they are in fact entitled to this information. Hint: they are not, and 23 federal judges have thus far agreed.
And, yet the DOJ has decided to continue this voter roll crusade.
On Sunday’s Meet the Press, Attorney General Todd Blanche confirmed that the DOJ would bring this campaign to the U.S. Supreme Court. At this point, the DOJ had only faced 22 losses.
“Absolutely, it’s a possibility,” Blanche said.
“We’re relying on a statute passed by Congress that allows us, in the right circumstances, to review and get those voter rolls,” he added. “So, no, we’re not going to stop doing what I think every American should expect us to do.”
Perfectly on cue: Only a day after Blanche’s comments a federal judge dismissed the DOJ’s case against Minnesota — rejecting the DOJ’s argument that the CRA somehow gives the administration the right to demand sensitive voter information from the states — bringing the grand total of losses to 23.
Trump Admin to Send 1,000 Federal Monitors to Polling Sites in the Fall
This week the DOJ announced that it plans to send 1,000 poll monitors to various polling places throughout the country for the midterm elections.
Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Harmeet Dhillon told Bloomberg News this week that the DOJ has plans to deploy approximately 1,000 election monitors this fall, ostensibly to ensure the midterm elections are secure, though she did not specify where exactly these monitors would be deployed — which will be a big tell when it comes to identifying the DOJ’s motives. Both Democratic and Republican administrations have routinely deployed DOJ election monitors over the years, but the Trump Justice Department has, up until this point, made it clear that it is hellbent on uncovering some sort of evidence to bolster Trump’s conspiracy theories about election administration in blue states, municipalities and purple counties, too.
Dhillon said the DOJ is “still formulating our final list” but said it might send monitors to places with language issues, disability access issues, and places with, what she described as, voter fraud issues.
“The United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division has sent monitors to election hot spots, polling places to increase voter confidence to troubleshoot problems and we are doing that now. We just did it in the primary,” she said. “We’re going to do it to the tune of approximately a thousand election monitors in the November election, and this is just something that DOJ does.”
“There’ll be some prosecutions in the pipeline of people who voted illegally who should not have, and we see a problem frankly with some election officials refusing to clean up their voter rolls and knowingly allowing noncitizens for example to stay on the voter rolls,” she added.
She also noted that this number of monitors is “probably going to be a historic number for a Republican administration.”
The goal, she said, is “increasing all American citizens’ confidence in our elections.”
The Trump administration recently sent federal elections monitors to oversee polling sites in three blue municipalities in Michigan earlier this month. And although it was largely uneventful, election officials reported that the presence of federal polling monitors did stir up fear and unease among voters.
In Other Election News:
TPM: Trump Is Using a New, Highly Unusual Census Bureau Report to Claim He Won the 2020
NBC: Texas AG Paxton claims widespread noncitizen voting. Three people have been charged.
Missouri Independent: Missouri ballot proposals blocked by secretary of state had enough signatures, records show
Who’s waiting to hear that each ‘election monitor’ will be accompanied by twenty or so ‘concerned citizen volunteers’ who have been given pre-emptive pardons for… anything that might happen.
Tina Peters is a committed insurrectionist. Her actions, trial, and conviction prove that fact.
California wouldn’t be facing the Tina Peters problem if CO Governor Jared Polis hadn’t given in to Trump’s pressure and pardoned her even though she never admitted wrongdoing or expressed the least bit of remorse. He’s just exported his problem to another state. I hope CO voters remember this.
Trump Admin to Send 1,000 Federal Monitors to Polling Sites in the Fall
I have trained as a poll worker in Pima County. The staffing at a polling location here consists of:
Other than the Observers, all staff are sworn in.
These are the only non-voters allowed inside the 75’ limit. The Election Observers are not allowed to interact with anyone other than the Inspector. They may not speak with voters, Clerks, Judges or the Marshall.
If they violate this, the Inspector can have the Marshall remove them. The Marshall can summon law enforcement, if needed.
Other jurisdictions may have different rules, but I understand this is a general outline of polling place staffing and rules across the country.
So bring it on, scheissksopf.