A California County Eyes a New Hire: Tina Peters, the Election Denier

Two months after her early release from prison, the election denier Tina Peters has a new job prospect: helping to oversee voting in a conservative corner of Northern California where claims of election fraud have taken root.

The news came on Sunday, when Clint Curtis, the clerk and registrar of voters in Shasta County, Calif., told a conservative radio host that he was planning to bring Ms. Peters on board next month as the new ***istant registrar of voters.

“She has experience,” Mr. Curtis said. “And she’s able to take the rocks and arrows.”

Ms. Peters, who was a Colorado county clerk, was convicted in 2024 for tampering with voting machines in a scheme to show that the 2020 election was rigged against President Trump.

It was unclear how real Mr. Curtis’s job offer actually was or whether Ms. Peters would accept it. Ms. Peters’s prison sentence was commuted, but the terms of her parole limit her ability to leave Colorado. And Mr. Curtis will only be in office until January, after losing the June election to a former elections official whom he had fired.

Mr. Curtis’s announcement immediately divided people in the county, where voters alienated by the liberal areas farther south periodically vow to break away to form their own “State of Jefferson.”

Some Trump faithful in Shasta cheered the potential arrival of Ms. Peters, one of the most famous figures in the election denial movement. Moderates and traditional Republicans bemoaned the ridicule and scrutiny that would come if their elections were handed over to Ms. Peters.

“It would continue to stoke controversy, divisiveness and increase distrust in our elections,” said Matt Plummer, a Republican member of the county’s officially nonpartisan board of supervisors.

Mr. Plummer said he had been deluged by emails over the past day from residents saying they did not want Ms. Peters running their elections.

Senator Alex Padilla, a Democrat, also weighed in on social media, to say that Ms. Peters’s hiring “should be stopped immediately.” The office of Gov. Gavin Newsom said that the state was investigating reports of Ms. Peters’s potential hiring.

Peter Ticktin, a lawyer for Ms. Peters, said she was considering an offer from Shasta County, but “there’s no decision made at this point.”

Ms. Peters was released from prison in June after Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado commuted her nine-year prison sentence, but the terms of her parole require her to find employment and forbid her to leave the state or change her Colorado residence without her parole officer’s permission.

A spokeswoman for Colorado’s Department of Corrections did not immediately respond to questions about whether Ms. Peters had sought permission to travel to Shasta County.

Ms. Peters has traveled out of state since her release, including a trip to the White House where she met with Mr. Trump, one of her staunchest allies, who spent months browbeating Colorado to release her. Last week, a court hearing uncovered evidence that Trump administration officials had organized a “brainstorm call” on how to cut federal funding for Colorado as the president publicly seethed over its mail-in voting practices and the conviction of Ms. Peters.

Mr. Curtis, an election skeptic from Florida, was appointed last April to serve as Shasta County’s clerk and registrar of voters, and his tenure has been marked by conflict.

Former elections officials said there have been spelling errors on ballots and filing mistakes during his tenure. Last week, the county’s conservative board of supervisors censured him, though he denied any misconduct, according to news media reports.

Some county officials were skeptical when Mr. Curtis told a conservative radio host on KCNR that he was going to “pull in” Ms. Peters as the county’s new ***istant registrar.

Shasta County officials said that position was already occupied and that there had been no formal proposal to replace that employee. Mr. Curtis told The Atlantic he would be hiring Ms. Peters as a consultant, a move that county officials said could give him more leeway.

Mr. Curtis did not respond to multiple messages seeking comment on Monday.

Ms. Peters would also have to undergo a criminal history check, according to the county’s hiring policies, although county officials said it was unclear whether her felony convictions would automatically disqualify her.

“It’s hard to know how real any of it is,” said Mr. Plummer, the county supervisor. “There are a lot of things said by our current registrar of voters..”

California is suing the county over a ballot measure approved by local voters that would ban most mail-in voting, require hand counts of ballots and mandate that voters present government-issued photo identification.

The office of the clerk and registrar of voters has been roiled by turnover over the past two years, as well as the turmoil of Mr. Curtis’s 15-month-long tenure.

Cathy Darling Allen, a Democrat who served as Shasta’s clerk and registrar of voters from 2004 to her retirement in 2024, said its elections had enough problems without Ms. Peters.

“Is this of any benefit to anyone in Shasta County?” she asked. “It’s just more chaos, more drama.”

Laurel Rosenhall contributed reporting.