Hours after being convicted of tampering with voting machines in Colorado in the name of Donald Trump, former Mesa County clerk Tina Peters griped that the outcome was a “sad day for our nation and the world” while continuing to spout false election-related conspiracy theories about “vote-flipping software that is basically in Serbia.”

Peters was found guilty Monday on seven of ten charges after she granted unauthorized individuals access to county voting machines in order to transfer data to Trump allies. Peters faces up to 22 years in prison.

Later in the day, Peters responded to her newfound status as a felon by posting Bible quotes and spreading baseless claims about election fraud.

    • dhork@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      The “Serbia” thing was news to me, too. It turns out Dominion has an office in Serbia. That’s it. That’s the sliver of factual basis for the new conspiracy theory.

      https://www.startribune.com/mike-lindell-and-the-other-voting-machine-conspiracy-theorists-are-still-at-it/600382431

      Leaf posted a Google Drive with thousands of pages of internal Dominion documents that had been provided as discovery in Byrne’s lawsuit. Some showed that top officials at Dominion had communicated with employees in one of its back offices in Belgrade, Serbia, near the time of the election — an otherwise innocuous fact that, according to Leaf, indicated that “Serbian military criminals” were “running our elections.”

      • Optional@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        That makes it one of the more credible conspiracy theories republiQans fall for.

        Most of them are just “The Bible says margarine is alien currency - lets hate the gays” sort of batshittery

        • dhork@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          The most insidious theories are the ones with a sliver of truth behind them. Because the ones pushing them can say “Do YoUr OwN rEsEaRcH” and lazy people will find that one or two points are true and punt on checking the rest.

          Like how these nutters went from “the company outsourced some of their engineering to Eastern Europe” to “the Serbian government is directly writing all their software”.

          • Optional@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            I mean, I’m all for a plausible theory. But the Qanon stuff just went koo koo bananapants from the get-go. I think initially as a joke, but then later it just was all a sad joke.

    • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      She will be a conservative darling doing talk circuits.

      I don’t get the impression that there’s a long shelf life for those folks. “Joe the Plumber” rose to conservative fame even without committing a felony. After the right fell in love with him for his 15 minutes, he had a “record deal”, co-wrote a book, and was also hired as a junior reporter for the right wing Pajamas Media (whatever that is) and 4 years later he’s working at a Jeep factory in Toledo source

  • Atelopus-zeteki@fedia.io
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    3 months ago

    They are sewing seeds of chaos before the election at every opportunity. A reasonable judge, seeing no remorse can give a longer sentence.

  • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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    3 months ago

    I feel like a lot of these people are unprepared for the civil war they claim to want

    When you live your whole life in a cushy environment with more competent people than you making sure that the lights stay on and the food keeps coming, it’s easy to have this weird fantasy that you are God’s chosen person and you can wander around believing and doing whatever you want. Just looking at this woman’s face, though, I feel like she would be the first to abandon her convictions and say yes judge I’ll do whatever you want once the cell door swings closed for real. Maybe I am wrong but that is the feeling I get from looking at her.

    • Optional@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      You’re probably right. But the MAGAsphere is going to wring a few more clicks out of her before she’s discarded. And she can’t wait to help them do it.

  • Numenor@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    I saw a photo of her from an article yesterday and felt a bit bad because I’d immediately thought - she has active bitch face.

    I told myself I shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but thankfully, her actions corroborate my first impressions.

    Unopened book correctly judged.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    “Basically” in Serbia? What does that even mean? Is the server on the border line with Bulgaria, but over 50% is on the Serbian side?

    • nova_ad_vitum@lemmy.ca
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      3 months ago

      The people she’s talking to are accustomed to rationalizing Trump’s statements which range from purposely ambiguous to utter nonsense. None of her audience is going to demand clarity or focus of her.

    • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      The way it was likely meant to be perceived was, they don’t look like us, talk like us, or think like us.

      It’s racism, nationalism, and regular old stupidly basically.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        They have all kinds of conspiracy theories for how Democrats stole the election but still let Republicans take the house and close to half of the Senate.

        • HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com
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          3 months ago

          oh yeah how the ole stupid, incompetent, cowardly democrats are going to dominate the world with their 6d chess manuevers that will let them rule with an iron fist.

  • Media Bias Fact Checker@lemmy.worldB
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    3 months ago
    Daily Beast - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)

    Information for Daily Beast:

    MBFC: Left - Credibility: Medium - Factual Reporting: Mixed - United States of America
    Wikipedia about this source

    Search topics on Ground.News

    https://www.thedailybeast.com/surveillance-footage-debunks-maga-clerk-tina-peters-mesa-county-voter-fraud-claims
    https://www.thedailybeast.com/maga-election-official-immediately-spews-conspiracies-after-conviction

    Media Bias Fact Check | bot support

  • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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    3 months ago

    But Serbia is a Russian ally.

    Why would Russia stop the party of letting Russia do whatever it wants?

  • MisterFrog@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    It is crazy that you have electronic voting machines in the US, you’re just waiting for it to be hacked aren’t you?

    Pencil and paper folks, much more secure 👍

    • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Yeah, but not by much. I remember reports of garbage bags full of D ballots being found in the dumpsters at voting sites in rural areas during the Bush II years. I don’t ever remember any investigations about it.

      • MisterFrog@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Yeah you still not a robust auditing system with multiple layers of oversight, and oh, ya know, a federal electoral commission directly oversees every level.

        Also the fact voting rules are different per state for a federal election is insane.

        Being able to throw out votes should be harder in physical form, because you actually need to transport physical things.

        Hack a voting machine? Much more silent.

        • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          I’m not saying that paper ballots aren’t more secure, but there wasn’t as much attention to being given to the questionable elections that got Bush elected. And yes, I do remember the “dimpled chads” in Florida. What I don’t remember was much coverage of the Brooks Brothers riot.

            • Jojo, Lady of the West@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              3 months ago

              The biggest thing (which he even acknowledged) is that there are dimensions which favor electronic voting over physical. It’s not as simple as “physical is always better” or “never trust electronic voting” because sometimes making sure it’s even possible for everyone to vote is more important than other factors.

              Generally, in an election the size of the us presidential election, Tom Scott at least believes paper is heavily favored.

      • funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works
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        3 months ago

        or per the TV show Succession where there’s a fire in a voting office that swings the election (may be based on a true story)