Shasta County, California, a far-right jurisdiction already kind of famous across the MAGAverse for its codified election denialism with moves such as ending its contract with Dominion and then simply not switching to a new vendor in 2023, is taking halfway to the next level by welcoming convicted felon former Mesa County, Colorado clerk Tina Peters to the team, the Guardian reports.
That “halfway to the next level” qualifier is there to denote a condition that clerk Clint Curtis placed on her role as the Guardian writes that Curtis has “said Peters would not have access to the county’s voting system” but otherwise “did not directly respond when asked what her responsibilities would be.” Yeah. It’s like if the Sinaloa Cartel hired Juan Orlando Hernandez but said outright that he wouldn’t have a login to their cocaine distribution software. Or RuPaul hired George Santos but said he wouldn’t have a key to the wig closet and has to wear a suit to work on the “Drag Race” show.
Maybe there’s a better analogue out there. Plus those two assholes were freed from federal prison by convicted felon President Trump whereas Peters was released from her sometimes tumultuous stay in a Centennial State DOC big house thanks to outgoing Dem Governor Jared Polis’s bafflingly chickenshit capitulation to a pressure campaign from the Orange God Emperor. Maybe people should’ve seen the Peters commutation coming when Polis ordered staffers to take down that hilarious (and possibly intentionally) awful portrait of Donald from the state capitol last year.
Anyway, what’s done is done. What isn’t yet is Peters actually getting the keys to the building and, as mentioned, Curtis is preemptively defending the hire and limiting the keys. It’s not like there’s any proscription on recruiting from out-of-state in Shasta’s elections department as Curtis himself – who was appointed by the county’s board of supervisors last year – is a D-list election denial influencer from Florida. Must’ve been a hell of a pitch deck. In fact Peters actually has more experience in this particular line of work than Curtis. An attorney by trade, this is his first-ever job administering elections and Peters’s title will be “consultant” and few would argue that a woman who held the same office elsewhere for four years is a bad pick… minus that she’s a convicted felon whose livestreamed breach of Mesa’s Dominion software cost her county’s taxpayers millions of dollars.
It also kind of did nothing whatsoever to prove the 2020 election was stolen from her Orange Allah but it’s not like being ineffectual in that never-ending LARP is a demerit to the weary masses of MAGAmerica. A track record of not delivering results on that vexing non-mystery is actually the best path to failing upward in this twisted parody of a 19th century patronage system. Just ask the FBI Director, the Republican nominee for this fall’s US Senate election in Texas, the DC US Attorney, the governor of Louisiana, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, and so on.
Huh. Actually raises the question of why Peters is humping it to some rural hayseed county in northern California instead of sitting behind a desk in DC and getting chauffeured to and from work at taxpayer expense. Maybe because Trump stopped giving a shit about her after Polis handed him an unforced political win by freeing the rural hayseed. Maybe she turned down a DC job and wanted to continue LARPing at the local level, in places where the nonexistent fraud non-happens.
Either way this attack dog’s out of the pound but on a short leash pulled by Curtis. The simplest explanation of course is the Shasta clerk is trying to keep the California Attorney General’s office from asking questions… even though they’re probably going to be asking questions anyway because he hired Peters in the first place. Not giving a shit about what some glorified hall monitor elected Democrat in a distant state capitol city – places filled with exotic novelties like escalators and parallel parking spots – is what earned Peters the MAGA cred she brings to Shasta elections.
She didn’t believe in things like statutory law or fiduciary duty or any of that mainstream bullshit if it conflicted with her completely subjective interpretation of the constitution and her deeply-held conviction that electronic voting machines are actually instruments of Satan. It’s almost like behind the scenes Curtis actually a competent if novice administrator whose careful, behind-the-scenes review of how balloting and counting them actually works in practice revealed to him that it’s impossible to steal an election in the 21st century United States and he’s only hiring Peters for the imprimatur of unrelenting dedication to and faith in MAGA’s pathetic fucking cult beliefs.
There’s your real election conspiracy, fanboys. Just asking questions about whether Curtis is truly on the level here and he’s simply using a “white hat” like Peters to lull you to sleep.