Campaign

County clerk Tina Peters loses primary recount after raising $250,000: report

After raising $250,000 for a recount of Colorado’s Republican primary for secretary of state, far-right candidate Tina Peters has lost her race for a second time.

The Denver Post reported Thursday that the Mesa County clerk lost by more than 88,000 votes to more moderate Republican Pam Anderson.

Peters reportedly gained just four votes in the recount, which required the quarter-million dollar fee.

The Hill has reached out to the Colorado County Clerks Association to confirm. 

Peters, who is a supporter of former President Trump, made headlines and led fundraising within her party throughout the primary campaigns for the office, despite being indicted on several felony and misdemeanor charges related to election fraud


Peters is accused of tampering with election equipment and having a copy made of hard drives from Mesa County’s Dominion voting machines. The Mesa County clerk said she did so to investigate what she suspected was election fraud.

The Colorado GOP in March called for Peters to suspend her campaign, and a judge barred her in May from working on her county’s elections during the midterms. She had also been blocked from overseeing the 2021 elections.

A warrant for Peters’s arrest was issued mid-July.

Peters denies the charges against her, attributing the indictments and her primary loss to political retribution for her election theories. 

She lost to Anderson, a former Jefferson County clerk, in the state’s June 28 primary before demanding a recount. Anderson rejects the 2020 presidential election fraud claims that Trump and Peters both tout. 

Anderson will now face Democratic incumbent Secretary of State Jena Griswold, who ran unopposed for her second term, in the November general election.