Opinion: As Republicans who have run Colorado elections, we decry GOP support of Tina Peters

It’s with great dismay that we read the Colorado Republican Party leadership’s recent call to all Colorado Republicans to support disgraced former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters. As current and former Republican election officials in Colorado, your decision to support an individual who has actively worked to undermine our elections statewide is a slap in the face and an affront to each of us who have worked to become experts in election administration and to build and sustain secure elections in Colorado over many decades.

Tina Peters now faces criminal charges in Mesa County in an upcoming trial. She is charged with criminal impersonation, identity theft, and attempting to influence a public officer. She claims to have committed these acts because she believed she was proving election fraud.

To be clear, there was no fraud in Mesa County elections. She led a willful breach of her voting system. Peters did not uncover any fraud or threats to Mesa County elections. In the end, she herself was the threat to election integrity in the county. Her actions made elections less secure and more susceptible to nefarious activity.

She has since embarked on a national campaign to discredit our elections processes, the same processes she never bothered to understand when she served as a county clerk. She has also attempted to raise money and has become quite famous while trying to deflect blame, putting her former staff and others in harm’s way.

As former and current Republican election officials, we have dedicated much time to understanding federal and state election laws and becoming experts in election processes. We have and will successfully run hundreds of elections at the local, county and state levels; and, in fact, correctly carried out the elections that put many of the current Colorado state Republican Party leaders in office. Facts matter in this and every debate.