Gov. Jared Polis had every right to question whether former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters’ original nine-year prison sentence was excessive. What he should not have done was interrupt the judicial process before it played out.
The Colorado Court of Appeals had already ordered Peters to be resentenced, but before the lower court could act, Polis – who is neither a judge nor an attorney – stepped in and commuted her sentence (Herald, May 18).
That decision is a sad day for Colorado, the rule of law and the election officials who have spent years defending this state’s democracy against escalating threats, intimidation and conspiracy theories.
Polis repeatedly framed Peters as a “first-time nonviolent offender” who received an unusually harsh sentence. But Peters was not an ordinary defendant. She was an elected county clerk entrusted with safeguarding the integrity of elections themselves.
Her crimes were not merely abstract political speech. A Mesa County jury convicted her of orchestrating a breach of secure election equipment, allowing unauthorized access to voting systems and helping expose sensitive election system data online in pursuit of conspiracy theories tied directly to the 2020 election denial movement.
Any attempt to portray Peters as a political victim is absurd on its face.
She was convicted unanimously by a Mesa County jury in a county Donald Trump carried by 28 points. She was sentenced by a Republican judge. Even Mesa County’s Republican commissioners condemned her conduct.
Polis’ comparison between Peters and former Democratic Sen. Sonya Jaquez Lewis was equally indefensible. Forging support letters in an ethics scandal is not remotely comparable to compromising election systems while serving as the public official responsible for protecting them.
As Denver District Attorney John Walsh correctly observed, the two cases were not “in the same solar system.”
Election workers across Colorado have endured years of harassment, threats and intimidation fueled by the same election conspiracy theories Peters amplified alongside figures like Mike Lindell and Donald Trump. Counties now shoulder security costs once unheard-of to protect election judges, staff and voters.
In Archuleta County last July, an election office was targeted in a firebombing attempt tied to a sheriff’s candidate who publicly embraced the same election conspiracy narratives promoted by Peters and Trump. Election lies do not remain confined to social media. They spill outward into real-world threats against the people entrusted with protecting democracy itself.
That reality is precisely why Colorado’s county clerks reacted with fury and heartbreak to Polis’ decision.
According to the Colorado County Clerks Association, clerks personally shared with Polis the threats, fear and professional toll they have endured while defending Colorado’s elections. Then, as pressure mounted around Peters’ case, the governor went silent.
The backlash crossed party lines. Attorney General Phil Weiser called the commutation “mind-boggling and wrong.” Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper denounced it. Republican gubernatorial candidate Barbara Kirkmeyer questioned why Polis refused to wait for the resentencing to be completed before intervening.
La Plata County Clerk Tiffany Lee’s perspective may be the most revealing. Lee served as Peters’ mentor during her first year in office.
“From my personal and professional experience, I knew she didn’t take the job seriously and we were going to have problems,” Lee said of Peters. “I knew she wasn’t going to uphold our oath of office.”
Lee, raised in a Republican family, changed her voter registration from Republican to unaffiliated in August 2020 after concluding election administration should not be partisan. Before coming to La Plata County, Lee worked elections in Oregon, where clerks already serve in nonpartisan roles. Alongside Courageous Colorado, she now supports similar reforms here.
In 2021, the bipartisan Election Reformers Network warned that polarization and election conspiracy theories were making partisan election administration increasingly untenable.
Peters now appears poised to rejoin the very national election-conspiracy circuit that made her a celebrity. Trump allies have already celebrated her commutation, while critics warn that a newly proposed Trump-backed compensation fund for supposed victims of “weaponization” could further reward those who helped undermine confidence in American elections.
Colorado’s clerks will continue doing what they have always done: uphold the law, protect the vote and serve the public with professionalism and integrity as another midterm approaches.
They deserved better from their governor.
