Hours after being convicted of tampering with voting machines in Colorado in the name of Donald Trump, former Mesa County clerk Tina Peters griped that the outcome was a “sad day for our nation and the world” while continuing to spout false election-related conspiracy theories about “vote-flipping software that is basically in Serbia.”

Peters was found guilty Monday on seven of ten charges after she granted unauthorized individuals access to county voting machines in order to transfer data to Trump allies. Peters faces up to 22 years in prison.

Later in the day, Peters responded to her newfound status as a felon by posting Bible quotes and spreading baseless claims about election fraud.

  • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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    4 months ago

    I feel like a lot of these people are unprepared for the civil war they claim to want

    When you live your whole life in a cushy environment with more competent people than you making sure that the lights stay on and the food keeps coming, it’s easy to have this weird fantasy that you are God’s chosen person and you can wander around believing and doing whatever you want. Just looking at this woman’s face, though, I feel like she would be the first to abandon her convictions and say yes judge I’ll do whatever you want once the cell door swings closed for real. Maybe I am wrong but that is the feeling I get from looking at her.

    • Optional@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      You’re probably right. But the MAGAsphere is going to wring a few more clicks out of her before she’s discarded. And she can’t wait to help them do it.

  • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.org
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    4 months ago

    This is more for the article linked in the body

    Tina Peters’ team claimed it was “physically impossible” for Mesa County clerks to upload certain batches of 2020 election ballots so quickly. The cameras showed otherwise.

    Don’t we all have “that one person” at the office? lol The one who’s like “it’s physically impossible” to not be terrible at your job while evidence shows everyone else not being terrible at their jobs?

  • Atelopus-zeteki@fedia.io
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    4 months ago

    They are sowing seeds of chaos before the election at every opportunity. A reasonable judge, seeing no remorse can give a longer sentence.

    Edit: Sowing! GArr!

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    “Basically” in Serbia? What does that even mean? Is the server on the border line with Bulgaria, but over 50% is on the Serbian side?

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        4 months ago

        They have all kinds of conspiracy theories for how Democrats stole the election but still let Republicans take the house and close to half of the Senate.

        • HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com
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          4 months ago

          oh yeah how the ole stupid, incompetent, cowardly democrats are going to dominate the world with their 6d chess manuevers that will let them rule with an iron fist.

    • nova_ad_vitum@lemmy.ca
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      4 months ago

      The people she’s talking to are accustomed to rationalizing Trump’s statements which range from purposely ambiguous to utter nonsense. None of her audience is going to demand clarity or focus of her.

    • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      The way it was likely meant to be perceived was, they don’t look like us, talk like us, or think like us.

      It’s racism, nationalism, and regular old stupidly basically.

    • iAvicenna@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      It is basically in Serbia but once in a while Putin takes it to Moscow to play tetris on it

    • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      She will be a conservative darling doing talk circuits.

      I don’t get the impression that there’s a long shelf life for those folks. “Joe the Plumber” rose to conservative fame even without committing a felony. After the right fell in love with him for his 15 minutes, he had a “record deal”, co-wrote a book, and was also hired as a junior reporter for the right wing Pajamas Media (whatever that is) and 4 years later he’s working at a Jeep factory in Toledo source

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    4 months ago

    It is crazy that you have electronic voting machines in the US, you’re just waiting for it to be hacked aren’t you?

    Pencil and paper folks, much more secure 👍

    • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Yeah, but not by much. I remember reports of garbage bags full of D ballots being found in the dumpsters at voting sites in rural areas during the Bush II years. I don’t ever remember any investigations about it.

      • MisterFrog@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        Yeah you still not need a robust auditing system with multiple layers of oversight, and oh, ya know, a federal electoral commission that directly oversees every level.

        Also the fact voting rules are different per state for a federal election is insane.

        Being able to throw out votes should be harder in physical form, because you actually need to transport physical things.

        Hack a voting machine? Much more silent.

        Edit: typos

            • Jojo, Lady of the West@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              4 months ago

              The biggest thing (which he even acknowledged) is that there are dimensions which favor electronic voting over physical. It’s not as simple as “physical is always better” or “never trust electronic voting” because sometimes making sure it’s even possible for everyone to vote is more important than other factors.

              Generally, in an election the size of the us presidential election, Tom Scott at least believes paper is heavily favored.

              • MisterFrog@lemmy.world
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                4 months ago

                It’s totally possible for everyone to vote with a paper system. We manage just fine here in Australia, and have massive turn out because it’s mandatory to vote as a citizen, you can vote in advance, via mail, and elections are always on a Saturday.

                The US has more people, but that just means you have more people to count votes, this scales just fine.

                Not to mention, there are places in the US who have paper ballots.

                I’m not sure there’s any situation where electronic voting could be claimed to a suitable way to provide more access to voting. It’s very, very easy to vote here in Australia, much more so than many places in the US.

                You just have to actually provide the resources to do it.

                I think this is a binary, in the case of elections, electronic is worse in terms of security, and the benefit of not needing to count up votes doesn’t make up for this.

                Unless you manage to find a more secure electronic method.

        • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          I’m not saying that paper ballots aren’t more secure, but there wasn’t as much attention to being given to the questionable elections that got Bush elected. And yes, I do remember the “dimpled chads” in Florida. What I don’t remember was much coverage of the Brooks Brothers riot.

          • MisterFrog@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            Sounds like a failure in the election procedure. I agree the fact this incident isn’t widely known (I’m not in the US, so I’m taking you’re word for it), is very troubling, and it’s no wonder trust in elections in the US is so low. Republicans wouldn’t be able to claim fraud if the system was entirely standardised across all electorates, and properly overseen. I note, there are other countries where the only election disputes are over the fairness of the voting system itself, and not if there is fraud (Australia, which is where I’m from).

            These people you mention should be in prison. If they’re not, then as a country you’re basically asking for election distrust.

            My initial point is that while Republicans who claim election fraud are likely wrong (seeing as, you only need to cheat when you’re unpopular, like the Republicans are), as a country, if you stick to your electronic voting, and non-standardised elections, you’re basically asking for voting fraud and distrust in the system.

            I find way too many people online defending the voting machines, simply because their team won.

            I feel entitled to comment on this as a foreigner, because I live in a vassal state, and this shit affects me.

      • funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works
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        4 months ago

        or per the TV show Succession where there’s a fire in a voting office that swings the election (may be based on a true story)

        • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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          I feel like a voting office going up in flames would warrant enough attention to cause people to demand a second chance. An old woman walking behind the build with a garbage bag is far more subtle.

  • Numenor@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    I saw a photo of her from an article yesterday and felt a bit bad because I’d immediately thought - she has active bitch face.

    I told myself I shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but thankfully, her actions corroborate my first impressions.

    Unopened book correctly judged.

  • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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    4 months ago

    But Serbia is a Russian ally.

    Why would Russia stop the party of letting Russia do whatever it wants?

    • dhork@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      The “Serbia” thing was news to me, too. It turns out Dominion has an office in Serbia. That’s it. That’s the sliver of factual basis for the new conspiracy theory.

      https://www.startribune.com/mike-lindell-and-the-other-voting-machine-conspiracy-theorists-are-still-at-it/600382431

      Leaf posted a Google Drive with thousands of pages of internal Dominion documents that had been provided as discovery in Byrne’s lawsuit. Some showed that top officials at Dominion had communicated with employees in one of its back offices in Belgrade, Serbia, near the time of the election — an otherwise innocuous fact that, according to Leaf, indicated that “Serbian military criminals” were “running our elections.”

      • Optional@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        That makes it one of the more credible conspiracy theories republiQans fall for.

        Most of them are just “The Bible says margarine is alien currency - lets hate the gays” sort of batshittery

        • dhork@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          The most insidious theories are the ones with a sliver of truth behind them. Because the ones pushing them can say “Do YoUr OwN rEsEaRcH” and lazy people will find that one or two points are true and punt on checking the rest.

          Like how these nutters went from “the company outsourced some of their engineering to Eastern Europe” to “the Serbian government is directly writing all their software”.

          • Optional@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            I mean, I’m all for a plausible theory. But the Qanon stuff just went koo koo bananapants from the get-go. I think initially as a joke, but then later it just was all a sad joke.