Election denier Tina Peters gets alarming new elections job in deep red California county

Convicted election denier Tina Peters has been out of prison for just over two months, but she may already have a new job lined up that would allow her to meddle with voting: assistant registrar of voters in Shasta County, California. 

Shasta Registrar of Voters Clint Curtis, an outspoken election skeptic, said Sunday that he had tapped Peters to replace his current assistant in September, Action News Now reported. The announcement comes at a time when she is actively traveling the country spreading phony conspiracy theories about voting.

Peters’ new gig will once again give her dangerous influence over elections, including the critical ballot counting process. For years, Shasta County, a conservative bastion in blue California, has tried to buck state voting laws by counting all ballots by hand.

The appointment would also position Peters to succeed Curtis, should he resign before his term ends, until the county board of supervisors can appoint a replacement. 

That is not an entirely remote possibility. Curtis faced censure by the board last week for threats, verbal abuse and retaliatory acts against employees, according to the Shasta Scout.

Peters previously served as the GOP clerk in Mesa County, Colorado, until she was arrested for her role in a 2021 voting system breach. Peters was convicted in 2024 after prosecutors showed she facilitated unauthorized access to Mesa County voting equipment and helped compromise sensitive system data, actions driven by false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. 

A jury found Peters guilty on multiple counts, and she was sentenced to nine years in prison by a judge who called her a “charlatan” who peddled “snake oil” and said she showed no remorse for her actions.

During her time in prison, Peters became a cause célèbre among election deniers, MAGA supporters and the far-right, who demanded she be set free. In May, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) commuted Peters’ sentence, after months of pressure from President Donald Trump. Peters was released from prison on June 1, after serving 20 months of her nine-year sentence. 

Since leaving prison, Peters has been hitting the far-right podcast circuit, pushing the same election conspiracies that led to her incarceration in the first place. 

“The truth is that [Democrats] are stealing our elections, and they’re very bold about it,” Peters told far-right podcaster Steve Stern in June. “And so far nothing’s being done. My main concern when I was in prison was that we’re going to lose this country if people don’t start exposing this and speaking out.”

There’s been widespread speculation that Peters could be appointed to an election-related position in the Trump administration. A few weeks before Trump gave his disinformation-heavy primetime speech on elections last month, Peters personally met with the president in the White House. 

But her new position is, in many ways, more concerning than anything Trump could give her.

“I’d thought she would get a spot in the Trump admin,” Stephen Richer, a former Republican Maricopa County Recorder and Cato Institute scholar, noted. “But her impact here will be more direct.”