July 29, 2022 09:29 AM UTC

How Would You Spend Tina Peters' Quarter Million?

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Grand Junction Sentinel’s Charles Ashby reports:

Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters paid the $255,912 needed to recount all votes in the June GOP primary for Colorado Secretary of State, a vote that had her coming in second place against the declared winner, Pamela Anderson.

As a result, elections officials in all 64 counties have until Aug. 4 to conduct their recounts, something that is expected to cause them to work the weekend to do so…

We can hardly imagine a more ingratiating burden for embattled Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters to inflict on her fellow county clerks than forcing them to spend this weekend at the office recounting an election that was in no way close instead of home with their families. But the law is the law, and if a candidate ponies up the prohibitively high cost of a recount within the specified period, which Peters did with help from Steve Bannon’s “War Room Posse,” it’s got to happen. Peters’ up-to-now partner in questioning the results of the June 28th primary, state Rep. Ron Hanks, appears to have been left high and dry.

Which doesn’t matter much now, because the recount is being set up to be declared a failure before it even begins. Peters knows (or should know) that she won’t be getting the hand recount she asked for:

The recount will be done with the same equipment used to count the June primary. Peters had asked for a hand count of all ballots, but state law and election rules dictate that existing machines be used in any recount. Those rules were put in place when Scott Gessler, a Republican who now is one of Peters’ attorneys, was secretary of state. [Pols emphasis]

When the results of this recount come back next week re-affirming Peters’ defeat, it is 100% certain that Peters will not accept that result either. If Peters never intends to accept the result of anything besides a hand recount, and knows that’s not the kind of recount she just plopped $250,000 down to have performed, it calls into question at a pretty basic level why she paid all that money, and why Bannon’s donors gave it to her.

And then you realize. There is no why. The whole purpose is to keep the uncertainty alive for just a little bit longer, during which Peters can continue to represent herself as a martyr instead of reckoning with the felony charges waiting for her in court. Which makes this, among other things, one of the most expensive denial parties in Colorado political history. Other than putting that $250,000 in a pile and literally lighting it on fire (above), it’s hard to imagine a more frivolous way to waste so much money.

With that, we’ll turn it over to readers: what would you spend Tina Peters’ $250,000 on? We’ll accept any submissions, better or worse, selfish to altruistic. It’s all the same to us since we, like Peters’ hapless donors wish they had said, don’t have any money to give you.