Voter fraud fraudsters are so desperate to prove election crimes occured that they will commit them themselves just to prove it.
“Election machine passwords from Mesa County, Colo., mysteriously appeared earlier this month on a right-wing conspiracy website,” the Washington Post Editorial Board reports. In this mini-saga, Tina M. Peters (R), Mesa County’s elected clerk and recorder, allegedly hacked her own county’s voting machines to show how it’s done, and “the county clerk’s presence at the election conspiracy-fest that MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell held in South Dakota last week does not help her credibility.” Peters is under investigation by both the Colorado Secretary of State’s office and the FBI:
This weird episode appears to pose no ongoing threat to voting security in Mesa County. But it suggests the lengths to which those devoted to the Trumpist lie will go — and the sabotage they could do if they are in positions of responsibility. Across the country, conspiracist candidates are running for election administration jobs, from secretary of state on down. Many Republican gubernatorial and state legislative candidates have also embraced the effort to undermine the credibility of the country’s democratic system by falsely claiming the 2020 presidential contest was rigged. Meanwhile, election workers simply doing their jobs are regularly facing threats to their safety, forcing them to wonder whether an unglamorous administrative job is worth the risk.
Even amid the tribalism of today’s politics, there are still tribunes of hope and sanity. Matt Crane, the Republican head of the Colorado County Clerks Association, condemned the Mesa breach. “There is nothing heroic or honorable about what happened in Mesa County,” he said. “As election officials, we have to be the grownups in the room.” U.S. democracy will no doubt depend once again on public-spirited officials such as Mr. Crane doing their duty against the unrelenting pressure of Mr. Trump and his acolytes.
Public spirit is not dead, just on a ventilator in certain quarters. Republican elections officials I have worked beside are for the most part doing the unsexy work of election administration because they believe in the work as public service. That does not mean that if you press the right buttons some crazy won’t leak out. But for the most part, they keep it in check and keep what they think privately separate from what they do as public officials. It’s the bleacher bums you have to watch out for, Ms. Peters (allegedly) excepted.
That is how it is supposed to work in federal service as well. What Trump and Trumpists encouraged, and Bushies before them, was putting partisanship above citizenship and duty. All that flag-waving and Constitution-clutching is more about allegiance to their team than to their country, whatever lies they believe about themselves.