Pro-Trump Colorado official sought by FBI accused of history of election bungling: report

According to a report from the Daily Beast's Kelly Weill, former co-workers who served with fugitive Mesa County, Colorado election official Tina Peters claim she has a history of sloppy habits while doing her job that could be construed as election tampering.

Peters is reportedly hiding out from an FBI investigation -- with the help of MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell -- after she was accused of facilitating the leak of highly sensitive election information which has reportedly led to multiple investigations.

In interviews with Weill, a portrait was painted of an official who did what she wanted, battled with colleagues and ran a sloppy ship that led to calls for her ouster.

As Weill reports, "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," later adding, "While overseeing the November 2019 general election, Peters' office forgot to count 574 ballots, instead leaving them unattended in a drop box outside her office for months. That slip-up coincided with a rush of departures from Peters' office. In December 2019, nearly 20 of Peters' 32-person staff had departed, the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel reported at the time. More staff quit days after the missing ballots were discovered, in late February 2020, bringing the departure count over two dozen."

Amanda Polson, who served as elections director under Peters predecessor had little good to say about her after noting that Peters was provided with an experienced official to help her out -- only for Peters to fire her after two months.

"Nothing had improved in the office. She was still, we thought, not handling the ballot issue correctly. There are some lines you can't cross in an election administration. That is one of them: not counting ballots that should be counted," Polson explained.

Polson, in turn helped lead a recall drive that failed, even after it was pointed out that "... a ballot drop-off box, installed by Peters' office for the 2020 primary election, appeared defective, sending completed ballots blowing across a parking lot. Peters claimed the leak was staged and blamed a local couple who'd reported the issue. The couple denied the allegation in an interview with the Daily Sentinel, where a reporter also noted ongoing issues with ballots becoming lodged in the drop box."

Added Polson about her recall efforts, "Those of us who were involved in recall, it was very taxing on us, mentally and physically. We all took a giant step back and figured that, if the recall failed, she was really someone else's problem at that point. We had done what we could to deal with it and it didn't work."

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