Tina Peters Shasta County is a phrase few election officials expected to read this year, yet it now describes an actual hiring plan. The former Colorado clerk, convicted of felonies tied to a breach of her own county’s voting equipment and freed from prison only weeks ago, is set to take a consulting role in one of California’s most restive counties.

Clint Curtis, who runs elections in Shasta County, confirmed the arrangement to the Guardian. He said Peters would step in for his chief deputy, Brent Turner, who is out on medical leave. Curtis insisted Peters would have no access to the county’s voting system, but he sidestepped questions about what her actual duties would involve. Local outlet Action News Now broke the story first.

There is a complication baked into the plan: Peters remains on parole and needs authorization before leaving Colorado at all.

A County That Chose This Path

Shasta County, home to about 182,000 residents in the state’s conservative north, has spent several years positioning itself at the center of the movement questioning American election integrity.

In 2023, county leaders attempted to sever their contract with Dominion Voting Systems and switch to counting ballots by hand. Election specialists warned the approach would cost far more while producing less accurate results. MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, among the loudest voices promoting fraud claims nationally, publicly backed the plan. State officials shut it down.

The pattern has repeated in other forms. Candidates who lost local races have turned to unsupported fraud theories and filed lawsuits seeking to reverse the outcomes.

Curtis Arrived Promising an Overhaul

The county board of supervisors installed Curtis last year as clerk and registrar of voters. A Florida attorney with no prior experience administering an election, he was open about his views: he opposes voting machines and has argued for years that American elections are manipulated. He pledged to rebuild the county’s system and turn Shasta into a model for the rest of the country.

His time in office has instead produced a steady stream of conflict. Investigations conducted both internally and by an outside reviewer concluded earlier this year that Curtis had fostered a hostile workplace and made violent threats toward employees. He rejects those findings entirely.

Last week the same board that hired him voted to censure him, condemning what it called flagrant and continuing breaches of personnel rules — specifically policies barring elected officials from leveling unfounded accusations that have never been examined.

Curtis returned fire, accusing former staff of sabotaging elections and announcing plans to sue the county. Everything the previous employees said about him is false, he told the Guardian, and he expects to prove it in court.

What Peters Was Convicted Of

Peters previously served as clerk in Mesa County, Colorado. In 2024 a jury found her guilty of four felonies and three misdemeanors after she permitted an activist connected to Lindell to pose as a county employee and sit in on a software update of Dominion equipment.

The fallout was immediate. Screenshots containing sensitive county material appeared on the far-right site The Gateway Pundit following the breach.

She began serving a nine-year sentence but walked free in June after Gov. Jared Polis commuted it. The Democratic governor faced sustained pressure from the federal government over the case and ultimately described the punishment as excessively harsh. According to the New York Times, Polis acted against the advice of his own clemency board, and the Colorado Democratic Party publicly criticized him for it.

Her release had become a rallying point on the right. President Trump pardoned participants in the January 6 Capitol attack and the fake elector effort, but he had no authority over Peters because her convictions were state, not federal.

Election Officials React

Matt Crane, who leads the Colorado county clerks association, did not hold back. He said Peters and her allies appear to have located another vulnerable point in the system, this time in California, and described the notion of treating her as an election expert as nearly self-satirizing.

Crane offered a few sardonic suggestions about what she might genuinely be qualified to advise on — leaving ballots sitting in a drop box for months after voting ends, perhaps, or committing crimes while failing to demonstrate any fraud at all. On the actual work of running lawful, secure elections, he said, she belongs at the bottom of anyone’s list.

Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold pointed to the substance of the convictions, which stemmed from Peters compromising the very equipment she was responsible for protecting. Placing her anywhere near election administration again, Griswold said, is troubling.

California Sen. Alex Padilla called for the hiring to be halted at once. Writing on X, he characterized it as Curtis attempting to bring an election denier in to coordinate with federal interference efforts, and said voters deserve elections free of partisan meddling.

Still Spreading the Same Claims

Peters has spent her post-prison months on conservative media, repeating the false assertion that votes were switched in 2020. The Atlantic reported that she has called on Trump to declare a national emergency ahead of the 2026 midterms.

There is an irony in that activity. Her clemency petition, obtained by the Atlantic, argued she posed no risk of repeating her offenses because she no longer holds a clerk’s position.

A Lame-Duck Move

Curtis is running out of time to make this or any other change. Voters removed him in June, choosing Joanna Francescut instead — a veteran of the Shasta elections office who had been assistant registrar until Curtis fired her upon taking charge.

That same ballot carried a measure requiring single-day in-person voting, photo identification and hand counting, which would effectively eliminate mail voting. California sued, and a judge has paused the measure for now.