Tina Peters, who served prison time for tampering with voting machines to prove President Donald Trump won in 2020, has turned down a job helping run elections in California.
Shasta County Registrar of Voters Clint Curtis confirmed the decision in an interview Tuesday with the Los Angeles Times.
Curtis, a longtime election denier himself, had planned to bring Peters on as a consultant "to assist with supervision of the November election" in the conservative Northern California county, he told the newspaper.
"She declined the offer because she's running around the country right now trying to secure the elections," Curtis said. "Shasta County lost out."
Curtis had put it more bluntly in a text message to the Record Searchlight a day earlier, writing that Peters "cannot take the job as she is heavily involved in election affairs all around ... and on (sic) DC." The decision came hours after California's governor made the hiring offer a statewide issue.
"A convicted MAGA election tamperer working in an elections office. What could possibly go wrong?" Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) wrote in a sarcastic post on X. "TINA, NOT IN CALIFORNIA! ELECTION DENIER FELONS NOT WELCOME HERE!!!"
Newsom's press office called the offer "a disgrace" and said the governor had directed the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to "make every effort" to reject the transfer of Peters' parole supervision into the state, the newspaper reported.
Because Peters remains on parole, a move to California would require permission from both Colorado and California, according to the Record Searchlight.
Sens. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Alex Padilla (D-CA) separately asked the California Secretary of State's Office to stay vigilant so that Peters could not handle voter information, the Record Searchlight reported.
The objections reached well past one county payroll, because what Peters was convicted of doing was done on Trump's behalf.
Peters, then the elected clerk in Mesa County, Colorado, breached her own county's voting equipment in 2021 as part of a scheme to show that the 2020 election was rigged against Trump, a claim that has been repeatedly rejected in court, the Los Angeles Times reported.
She was found guilty of helping an associate of MyPillow founder Mike Lindell gain unauthorized access to the county's Dominion voting machines and copy the hard drives before and after a software upgrade, according to the newspaper. The data and passwords were later leaked on social media, according to the Record Searchlight.
A jury convicted Peters in October 2024 of four felonies and three misdemeanors, and a judge sentenced her to nine years, the Record Searchlight reported.
Lindell's involvement did not end with the breach. He also paid for her defense, he told reporters in Denver in 2022.
"I don't know, I probably put in three, four, five, maybe 800,000 [dollars] of my own money," Lindell told 9NEWS of his contributions to a legal fund supporting Peters.
"I had never met Tina Peters. I just met her that day," Lindell said of the woman whose defense he was financing, the Colorado Sun reported. Colorado bars elected officials from accepting gifts worth more than $65 from anyone who is not a relative or close friend, and ethics complaints followed.
Trump had spent months pressing Colorado to let her out of prison, according to the Los Angeles Times. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D-CO) commuted the nine-year sentence on May 15 and Peters was released on parole June 1, having served less than a quarter of it. Peters then met Trump in the Oval Office, even though her parole bars her from leaving Colorado without her parole officer's permission.
Peters gave the Shasta County offer serious consideration, her attorney, Peter Ticktin, told the newspaper, though the position would "not have been a full-time position" because she is so busy.
"There's far more for her to do than get tied up in one county," Ticktin said. "At this point, she is an American icon. I mean, think about it: How many people meet with the president of the United States in the Oval Office?"
The Shasta County Registrar of Voters who offered her the job shares her view of American elections, the Los Angeles Times reported.
As an election official for the country, Curtis has sequestered primary ballots in a room at the elections office in Redding, sealing the doors with locks and duct tape and telling reporters the ballots did not look, feel or smell right, according to the newspaper. Curtis and county officials have both asked the FBI and other authorities to investigate.
County supervisors censured Curtis on Aug. 11 after investigations found evidence of misconduct in his running of the department, the Record Searchlight reported. He lost the June primary to Joanna Francescut, a longtime assistant registrar he had fired, and his term expires in January.
"California is kind of a second-chance state. Except for Tina Peters. No second chance for her in Shasta County," Curtis said, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The job Curtis described was not vacant. Brent Turner, the Shasta County assistant registrar, said his position was never open because he had not quit, the newspaper reported.
"I'm glad that Gavin is paying attention," Turner insisted.
