The top election official for Shasta County, Calif. said he has offered convicted felon and former Mesa County, Colo. clerk Tina Peters a position as a consultant to help with the 2026 elections, but that she hasn’t accepted the position yet.  

Earlier this month, Shasta County registrar Clint Curtis told local news outlets that he intended to hire Peters as assistant registrar of voters to help with the upcoming 2026 elections, months after she was released from prison in Colorado.

In an interview with CyberScoop this week, Curtis said he was looking to hire Peters as a consultant, citing the length of time involved in hiring her as a full-time employee and the need for immediate help running the upcoming midterm elections.

Curtis said that he initially believed Peters had accepted the position, only to later hear from her that she needed to consult her legal team after her prison sentence was commuted in June.

“She’s got to check it all out, make sure it’s okay, make sure there’s not any roadblocks in there that we don’t know about [or are] illegal, so you got to walk through the whole mess,” said Curtis.

A Colorado Department of Corrections official told CyberScoop that as part of her parole conditions, Peters must be employed and live in Colorado. Peters can request a transfer to another state, but she must first receive permission from both states and go through a formal review process.

According to Curtis, hiring Peters as a consultant means she would not have local access to county email or election systems. Peters’ past conviction “doesn’t matter” because her access to county IT would be limited.

“If she’s on staff she’d have logins to the network, logins in the system, she’d basically have full access,” Curtis said in a phone interview. “But consultants don’t have any of that, nor should they, right?”

Consultants “are basically there to actually watch other people do it and make sure they do it right rather than do it themselves,” he added.

At the same time, when asked what responsibilities Peters would have, Curtis described an expansive role, with Peters helping him oversee the registrar’s office and direct his full-time staff of about 12.

Asked what drew him to Peters, Curtis said “well, she’s out [of prison] and I have this position become available [and] I need somebody that can actually supervise and knows something about elections.”

In 2024, Peters was convicted of seven felony crimes related to the theft of voting machine software from Mesa County election facilities, in a failed attempt to prove that the machines had been involved in election fraud during the 2020 election.

She served less than two years of that sentence, as legal appeals, relentless pressure from the Trump administration and eventually a commutation by Colorado Governor Jared Polis saw her released from prison in June.

Curtis said he did not reach out to any Mesa County officials before offering Peters the job, but did cite conversations with her that impressed him and his confidence that he would remain in control of the county’s elections.

“I talked to her and basically, she’s very even tempered, she’s not wild and crazy which is good,” said Curtis. “And so basically I’d still be in charge so it wouldn’t really be a problem…there’s no way she would get out of bounds on me.”

A request to Mesa County’s press office seeking comment was not returned. At Peters’ sentencing hearing in 2024, multiple Mesa County officials testified about the negative impact her crimes and behavior had on the county’s elections, finances and reputation.

When reached for comment, a representative for Peter Ticktin, Peters’ lawyer, provided CyberScoop with a statement from last week regarding Peters’ intentions.

“Tina Peters is giving consideration to helping in the efforts in Shasta County as there most definitely has been monkey business in the way the election was handled,” Ticktin said. “Tina is one of the key voices leading the effort to get the invasive machines out of our election process.”

Earlier this month, Curtis was censured by the Shasta County Board of Supervisors following investigations into  allegations of verbal abuse and threatening language to staff.

Curtis, who was appointed county registrar in 2025, also made a number of claims about what he called suspicious mail-in ballots used during the 2024 election. He claimed the ballots were different sizes and looked, felt and “smelled” different from normal mail-in ballots.

Curtis told CyberScoop he did not follow up with the county’s ballot manufacturer to ask if there was a credible explanation, saying he lacked investigative authority to do so. He also could not answer how many instances of voter fraud his office had confirmed. 

A day after speaking with CyberScoop, the Shasta County Board of Supervisors said Curtis’ claims were “frivolous” and that they “welcomed” investigations by state and federal authorities.

“Mr. Curtis was hired to enhance transparency, strengthen election integrity and restore trust. While some progress has been achieved, including the promotion of meaningful observation within the Elections Office, Mr. Curtis has failed significantly in other core responsibilities, undermining the very principles he was appointed to uphold.”

The press office for California Secretary of State Shirley Weber’s told CyberScoop that irrespective of whom a county employs or contracts with, they must comply with California law, security and confidentiality requirements, and “maintain the integrity of our state’s elections and election processes.”  

Weber also sharply questioned Peters’ involvement in California elections.

“As Secretary Weber has stated, ‘The mere thought of letting someone near any part of California’s elections when that person was convicted of serious election-related crimes while serving as an election official, is simply outrageous,’” Weber’s office wrote in an email. “Our office is monitoring the situation and, as always, will act within our authority and work closely with law enforcement officials to ensure that all elections in our state remain transparent, safe, and fair for all eligible voters.”

Curtis expressed frustration to CyberScoop at the delays, saying he needed immediate help and expressing concern that Peters’ legal roadblocks may make it harder to hire her at all.

“You know, if they stall sufficiently enough, then she won’t be able to get any help to me,” said Curtis. “So I need her fairly quickly. We start early voting in…30 days, something like that. So we need it quickly, we need to get her in here, tell her what to do, set people up and get it ready to go. Otherwise, I have to do it all, and that’s going to be a pain.”

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Clint Curtis, the registrar for voters in Shasta County, Calif. said he plans to hire convicted felon and election denialist Tina Peters as one of his top deputies.

Curtis said he plans to hire Peters next month as an assistant registrar, according to local news outlets, which cited text exchanges with Curtis.

CyberScoop has reached out to Shasta County’s elections office for comment.

If Peters is hired, it would represent a marriage between a conspiracy-minded election official from another state and an equally distrusting electorate.

Donald Trump won Shasta County approximately two-thirds of voters in the county in all three presidential elections dating back to 2016. Its conservative residents have adopted Trump’s rhetoric that election fraud, voting machine hacks, noncitizen voting and other problems plagued the system, and have turned their anger at local officials.

Cathy Darling Allen, Shasta County’s former registrar of voters, told CyberScoop in 2024 that she retired after decades of administering elections in the county due to persistent attacks and harassment from voters who embraced baseless election fraud conspiracy theories. 

Peters, a former Mesa County, Colo. election official, had been serving a 9-year sentence for seven felonies, including identity theft, breaking into an election office, disabling surveillance cameras, and stealing voting system software.

Peters’ prosecutor, Colorado’s state clemency advisory board, and Mesa County officials have all defended her sentence and described her as entirely unrepentant for her crimes.

Election experts have called Peters’ theft of voting system software one of the most serious breaches of election systems in history. She shared the stolen code with conservative activists, and the code eventually surfaced online.

Governor Jared Polis, a Democrat, commuted Peters’ sentence earlier this year, citing pressure from the Trump administration and arguing that her punishment violated her First Amendment rights. In doing so, Polis intervened before an appeals court could decide whether Peters deserved a reduced sentence.

“She may continue making claims about elections that I believe are false,” Polis wrote in a May Substack post defending the decision. “She may continue promoting ideas that I strongly disagree with. I hope she doesn’t. But in America, people are not sent to prison for expressing political views, however misguided those views may be.”

In response to questions about Peters, Polis’ press office referred CyberScoop to the Colorado Department of Corrections.

Department of Corrections spokesperson Alondra Gonzalez told CyberScoop in an email that as part of her parole conditions, Peters is required to get a job or participate in a full time educational or vocational program and reside in Colorado. Parolees can request to transfer to another state, but those requests would be subject to rules and procedures under the Interstate Compact for Adult Offender Supervision and require approval from both states.
Gonzalez told CyberScoop that the department has not received a request for an interstate transfer from Peters at this time.

The Shasta County board of supervisors formally censured Curtis earlier this month following investigations by the county and outside consultant firm The Oppenheimer Group found he was verbally abusive or physically threatening toward staff.

At an Aug. 11 public meeting, Shasta County Supervisor Matt Plummer cited more than 700 pages of evidence and more than half a dozen eyewitnesses.

The investigations included claims that Curtis at times threatened to “punch,” “slap in the face,” “kill” or “execute” his subordinates. Another claim alleges Curtis once threatened to remove a door where an employee was allegedly hiding from him and have the person pulled out by their hair.

Plummer prefaced his comments by saying the board’s action is “not about election integrity” and that Curtis retains all of his authority to carry out budgeted election administration for the county.

“This is about determining when a department head allegedly and through two investigations, has substantiated allegations of violating personnel codes, the codes that guide how we as a county intend to interact with our employees, what do we do about it?” Plummer said.

Senators Alex Padilla, D-Calif., and Adam Schiff, D-Calif., wrote to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber to express their “grave concern” over the possibility that Peters would have access to state election systems.

“If Shasta County puts Ms. Peters in a position to again violate election laws following her convictions, county taxpayers could be burdened with unwelcomed and potentially hefty expenses,” Padilla and Schiff wrote. “If county officials proceed with this misguided plan, we request that you provide the maximum oversight possible to ensure that Ms. Peters does not improperly access ballots, voting systems, or sensitive information that could impact the rights and privacy of the over 100,000 registered voters in Shasta County in violation of…state or federal election law.”

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