Free And Fair?

Authored by James Howard Kunstler,

“The prison sentence made Ms. Peters, 70, a martyr for the election-denial movement, and launched a fruitless campaign by Mr. Trump’s followers to win her release from state prison.”

- The NY Times

“Election denier” is a curious term. It implies that anyone who even questions the validity of an election is not right in the head, maybe even. . . a heretic, a sociopath, a criminal, an enemy of the people! 

The New York Times flogs the term incessantly as a sort of talisman, to ward off suspicions (branded as evil) that US elections are anything but free, fair, and upright.

Tina Peters was County Clerk in Mesa County, western Colorado, at the time of the 2020 elections, which Donald Trump won in her county by a 63-percent margin, though “Joe Biden” won the state.

In May, 2021, during a so-called “trusted build” update of her county’s Dominion ballot tabulation machine software, Tina Peters sought evidence that the machines were capable of being manipulated by wireless internet.

She made copies of the hard drives and published passwords online, exposing proprietary software and sensitive system information.

She was indicted in 2022 on 13 counts and convicted in August of 2024 on seven counts.

Tina Peters, sentenced in Colorado

Judge Matthew Barrett threw the book at her, handing the then-69-year-old grandmother a nine-year stretch in state prison. His spoken remarks at sentencing included:

“You are no hero. . .”

“You’re a charlatan who used, and is still using your prior position to peddle snake oil that’s been proven to be junk time and time again. . .”

“You’re as defiant as any defendant this court has ever seen. . .”

“Prison is where we send people who are a danger to all of us, whether it be by the pen or the sword or the word of the mouth.”

Rather harsh treatment, wouldn’t you say?

A classic case of someone being made an example of, as a caution to others who might dare to question an election. Of course, many of us who stayed up late Nov. 3-4, 2020, saw what looked like considerable shenanigans reported from voting precincts around the country. There were the weird flipperooskies in Michigan and Wisconsin where Mr. Trump was winning by a lot, and then, suddenly, at two o’clock in the morning, “Joe Biden” shot way ahead.

The explanation has been that Republicans show up to vote on election day and their votes are counted early while more Democrats voted by mail-in ballots, which are counted later on.

That does not account for the thumping irregularities in the mail-in vote itself, the skeezy ballot-harvesting activities and drop-box stuffing of Democratic Party ward-heelers; the instances, statistically absurd, when all the votes in a late hour were cast only for “Joe Biden” and none for Trump; the $400-million that Mark Zuckerberg gave in grants — through his Center for Technology and Civic Life — to 2,500 election districts, which allowed him to replace local election officials with outside ringers; the monkey-business in Fulton County, GA, where a supposedly “broken toilet” closed down the operation while CCTV cameras recorded suitcases full of ballots hauled out from underneath the tables and duly tabulated during the “shutdown;” the arrival of a truck from Long Island loaded with boxes of ballots at the loading dock of the main Philadelphia precinct center in the wee hours of the morning. . . and much more. Not to mention whatever the Dominion machines were doing in the background.

What is even the necessity of the Dominion voting machines?

All they do is provide superfluous complexity to the process and invite fraud. How did it become outside acceptable discourse to even ask about that?

Answer: because the Democratic Party benefits from opportunities for fraud, and many Republicans go along with it because, you know, Trump Trump Trump.

In any case, despite all the cries of “baseless claims” and “election denial,” and other patently disingenuous mantras, our elections give off the odor of fraud and the means for cleaning them up are obvious and simple — which I’ll spare you from rehearsing again. What’s more, we are just now learning about the extensive involvement of Venezuela in producing the Dominion machines and using them globally to engineer election outcomes. That might be the main reason our navy is parked off that nation’s coast just now.

For months, Mr. Trump’s Department of Justice attempted to intervene in the Tina Peters case and, at least, get her moved into a safer federal prison. Colorado officials fought all that. So, last week, Mr. Trump issued a pardon for Tina Peters. There is mixed opinion as to whether a president can pardon anyone convicted in a state jurisdiction. Colorado told Mr. Trump that his pardon will not apply — that they will keep Tina Peters in the state slammer. There are additional considerations as to whether anyone in “Joe Biden’s” DOJ might have unduly participated in or influenced the process that led to Tina Peters’ conviction. . . and, if so, whether that would make a presidential pardon apply.

Now, Mr. Trump says he will release new, additional information that the 2020 election was “rigged.” You might suppose that he is in a position to know. DNI Tulsi Gabbard likewise says she has proof that the Dominion voting machines were tampered with around the nation in 2020.

Wouldn’t it be nice if, by Christmas Eve, the president sent a contingent of US marshals to Colorado demanding the release of Tina Peters into federal custody. . . and arrested any Colorado official, including Governor Jared Polis, who interferes with the process? Wouldn’t you like to see that?