For democracies to survive, attacks on elections must carry consequences that should not be bargained away. By commuting the sentence of election denier Tina Peters on Friday, Colorado’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis, sent a dangerous message that accountability is negotiable when the political pressure becomes intense enough.
Clemency is not simply a legal judgment. It is a moral and civic statement about what conduct a society is willing to excuse, minimize or move beyond. After years of Donald Trump’s escalating attacks on election legitimacy, Polis’ action in this political climate — effectively cutting Peters’ nine-year sentence in half — further blunts the deterrent effect of enforcing election law. It suggests that even serious violations may not carry lasting consequences.
Peters compromised election systems in pursuit of the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen.
Last month, a Colorado state appeals court ordered a new sentencing for Peters, a former county clerk who was convicted in 2024. Let’s revisit the details of that conviction.
As I wrote for MS Now in March, Peters was found guilty “by a jury of her peers — in conservative Mesa County — on seven counts, including four felonies, of orchestrating an illegal breach of her county’s voting equipment. She let an unauthorized outsider into a secure elections room, directed staff to shut off surveillance cameras and copied hard drives from voting machines — all to try to prove conspiracy theories about the 2020 election that were never true.”
We are not talking about merely overheated rhetoric or posting conspiracy theories online. Peters compromised election systems in pursuit of the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen. On Friday, Polis cited the April appeals court ruling, which found that the trial judge had based part of Peters’ sentence on her protected speech. But Peters was convicted for her conduct: giving Trump allies unauthorized access to voting equipment.
Immediately after her conviction and until just recently, Peters has remained defiant about her crimes. Only in the wake of Polis’ action has Peters finally admitted that she “made a mistake” and had “misled” Colorado election officials. But, as of Friday, her official website still calls her prosecution politically motivated. Her social media accounts still promote debunked claims about Venezuelan voting machine technology. One of her allies called on Trump just this week to “invade Colorado” to free her.
It should go without saying that a governor shouldn’t grant clemency to someone actively undermining the premise of the clemency request. But here we are.
It should go without saying that a governor shouldn’t grant clemency to someone actively undermining the premise of the clemency request. But here we are.
Polis’ decision Friday attracted condemnation across the political spectrum. Republican Matt Crane, executive director of the Colorado County Clerks Association, said in a statement that Polis is “bending the knee to the same political forces and conspiracy movements that are actively undermining confidence in our democratic institutions.” Phil Weiser, Colorado’s Democratic attorney general, called the decision “mind-boggling and wrong as a matter of basic justice.”
In December, Trump issued a symbolic “pardon” for Peters — symbolic because a presidential pardon has no effect on state convictions. His pressure campaign in pursuit of freeing Peters has been intense: Trump closed a federal climate lab in Colorado, denied federal disaster relief, yanked more than $100 million in transportation funding, and froze child care and food assistance for low-income families — all while lobbying Polis privately to free Peters.
Polis told CNN on Friday that Trump often gets facts about Peters wrong. Yet the outcome here is exactly what Trump demanded.
Every future election official, activist or conspiracy theorist watching this saga can now make calculations about risk and reward. What happens if they cross legal lines? Will the consequences hold? Or could enough political pressure eventually produce an escape hatch?
Polis just answered that question.
Peters became a hero to the election-denial movement because she crossed a line others wouldn’t. Trump’s support turned her into a martyr. Whereas she should be seen as a public official who violated her oath to protect election systems, many perceive her as a supposed truth-teller persecuted for the cause.
Every future election official, activist or conspiracy theorist watching this saga can now make calculations about risk and reward.
Polis told Colorado Public Radio on Friday that this decision was “about doing what’s right.” Election deniers will hear something else entirely: that consequences are temporary.
That’s the real cost of Polis’ terrible decision. The issue is not that one 70-year-old woman is set to walk out of a prison on June 1. What her release teaches is that it’s okay to cross the line. Serve the cause. Survive the backlash. Eventually, the pressure campaign pays off.
Mercy absolutely has a place in our judicial system. But mercy untethered from lasting consequences becomes permission.
Unfortunately for law-abiding citizens everywhere, Jared Polis did more than free Trump’s ally. Whatever dressing he tries to put on it, Colorado’s governor has legitimized the movement that made Peters a hero and weakened the deterrent for the next person willing to cross the same lines.
The post Tina Peters deserves due process, not political clemency appeared first on MS NOW.