Colorado election official Tina Peters was not jailed for exposing voter fraud

Context

False claims have circulated that Tina Peters, the former clerk in Mesa County, Colorado, was sentenced to nine years for exposing and uncovering voter fraud (archived here and here). The claim has gone viral on X (previously Twitter) in at least two languages, with more than 150,000 views in two days. 

However, the claim is false. Peters was not sentenced to nine years in jail for uncovering or exposing voter fraud. 

In fact

On August 12, 2021, Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold confirmed a security breach regarding election equipment in Mesa County. According to Griswold, the clerk, Tina Peters, had allowed an unauthorized person to access the county's Dominion machines' software, passwords, and hard drives. 

During the subsequent investigation and trial, Peters admitted that in May 2021, she had used Gerald Wood's identity to allow entry for Conan Hayes, a self-described data expert from California affiliated with Mike Lindell. Lindell is the chief executive of My Pillow and has been an ardent disseminator of Donald Trump's "Stop the Steal" campaign and the 2020 election results denial movement. 

According to local media coverage of the trial, the material was shared online among adherents of the movement, and the Mesa Country hard drive was displayed and discussed at a "Cyber Symposium" hosted by Lindell. Peters' actions made her a celebrity in the election denial movement. The leaked material has also been used as "evidence" of vote security vulnerabilities and voter fraud by the election denial movement. 

In August 2024, according to local media coverage of the court case, Peters was found guilty of "three counts of attempting to influence a public servant and one count of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation." She was also convicted of first-degree official misconduct, violation of duty, and failure to comply with an order from the Secretary of State. She was acquitted of criminal impersonation, conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, and identity theft. 

On October 3, she was sentenced to nine years in prison for the charges. 

The sentence was the culmination of a three-year-long investigation following the breach. During the sentence, Judge Matthew Barret stated to Peters: "Your lies are well-documented, and these convictions are serious. I'm convinced you would do it all over again if you could. You're as defiant as a defendant as this court has ever seen." 

He added, "You are no hero. You abused your position – and you're a charlatan who used and is still using your prior position to peddle a snake oil that’s been proven to be junk time and time again." Peters has continued to deny any wrongdoing and says she was acting for the greater good. 

Logically Facts has also investigated other false claims about Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold and a more recent password leak. You can read that fact-check here.

The verdict

Tina Peters was not sentenced to jail for exposing voter fraud. The charges that led to her jail sentence were allowing unauthorized personnel to access election voting machines and gaining access to software, passwords, and hard drives, which were later shared online. We have, therefore, marked this claim as false. 

Follow Logically Facts' coverage and fact-checking of the U.S. Election 2024 here.