A Colorado county official who has spread voter fraud claims and was indicted earlier this year for allegedly tampering with county voting machines is vying for the Republican nomination for Colorado secretary of state.
Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters is running for secretary of state against Mike O'Donnell and former Jefferson County Clerk Pam Anderson in a race with few public polls.
Anderson told the Colorado Sun that the election was fair, despite Peters insistence that the election was rigged.
In March, a grand jury indicted Peters on 10 counts, accusing her and her deputy of planning a "deceptive scheme" to let an unauthorized person take images of sensitive county election equipment.
The Secretary of State blamed Peters after images and passwords from county voting systems appeared on right-wing websites.
Peters told the Sun that she would not plead guilty because she had not committed a crime. Peter said in an interview with a Denver TV station last year that she did a back-up image of election systems ahead of a software update because she was concerned about the deleted election files.
Peters was barred from overseeing the election due to the charges against her. Peters and her deputy were barred from supervising the election because of the allegations, and neither of them had been charged yet.
The winner of Tuesday's primary will face off in a general election against another person. Griswold defeated Williams by 5.8 points in the election.
In support of Donald Trump, Republicans in multiple states have pushed voter fraud allegations over the last 18 months. Prominent voter fraud believers are running for secretary of state in Arizona, Nevada and Michigan. Local officials have tried to investigate fraud allegations on their own. Some GOP lawmakers in Arizona commissioned a bizarre and controversial audit of 2020 election results, Pennsylvania Republicans pushed for a similar audit, and a more routine election review in a small New Hampshire town was seized upon by Trump supporters who believed it would surface proof of vote-rigging In a rural New Mexico county, elected officials refused to certify the results of the primary election because of vague suspicions about voting machines.
Tina Peters is the Mesa County clerk.