Gov. Jared Polis (D-CO) faced intense backlash from Colorado Democrats on Wednesday for granting clemency to former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, who was convicted on charges of election interference in the 2020 election.
The Colorado Democratic Party approved a measure to censure Polis after the governor made Peters, who was serving out a nine-year prison sentence, eligible for parole on June 1. The vote, approved by 90% of the Democratic Party’s State Central Committee, means he will not be allowed to participate as an honored guest, speaker, or recognized representative of the party at party functions. The development came after President Donald Trump repeatedly called on the Democratic governor to release the election clerk, and her legal team raised concerns about the safety and health hurdles she said she has faced in jail.
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“Reducing her sentence now, under pressure from Donald Trump, is not justice,” the Colorado Democratic Party said in a statement. “It sends a message to future bad actors that election tampering has consequences, unless you’re friends with the president. That’s a dangerous and disappointing precedent to set.”
“The State Central Committee finds that Governor Jared Polis’s decision to grant clemency to Tina Peters materially harmed the Colorado Democratic Party’s institutional credibility and efforts to defend democratic institutions and election integrity,” the statement continued.
Peters’s case gained national attention and caught Trump’s eye when she was convicted in 2024 of four felonies and three misdemeanor charges related to a breach of voting systems in the county.
Peters allowed an external GOP affiliate to access Mesa County voting equipment around a 2021 software update and helped him obtain a security badge to access the facility. Peters said she made the move to preserve evidence she believed proved that Dominion Voting Systems and Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold coordinated a statewide software update to erase election system data from Dominion machines to help then-Democratic candidate Joe Biden win the presidency. After making a copy of a hard drive during an update of election equipment in May 2021, images of Mesa County voting systems were later posted online, leading to charges against Peters and two of her colleagues involved in the controversy: deputy clerk Belinda Knisley and elections manager Sandra Brown.
Polis defended his move to commute Peters’s sentence in comments to the Daily Sentinel, saying her sentence was disproportionate to her crime and pointing out that her actions did not interfere with the election, but rather pertained to trying “to copy the software for an independent audit prior to an [election] update.” He argued that Peters’s belief that election interference had occurred was protected speech under the First Amendment. He cited the Colorado Court of Appeals’ recent ruling that Peters should be resentenced, as her original sentencing was “based in part on improper consideration of the exercise of her right to free speech.”
“She very well believes in many conspiracy theories, but just because somebody believes that the Earth is flat, it doesn’t mean that they deserve a longer sentence than somebody who believes it’s round, so I adjusted the sentence,” Polis said. “I think it’s important that speech is never used as a basis for punishment.… It’s well-settled that the First Amendment generally prohibits punishing someone for their protected speech, and the trial court’s comments about Peters’s belief about the existence of election fraud went beyond relevant considerations for her sentencing.”
In an interview with Colorado Public Radio on Friday, Polis reiterated the sentiment, saying his office received thousands of calls saying Peters was over-sentenced for the wrong reasons.
“She committed a crime. It did not interfere with any election, did not have to do with ballot counting, but it was illegal access to the computer room,” the Democratic governor said. “She thought she was trying to back up the software before it was updated. She did it illegally. There’s no question about it. And she deserves to go to prison. And I think this is a more appropriate, even harsh, frankly, sentence for that crime.”
“This is not a pardon. It’s really making sure that her free speech was not a criteria for her overly harsh sentencing,” he added.
Peters’s lawyer wrote to Trump in December 2025, arguing that Peters had legally preserved the images and a copy of the Mesa County election system data before the update occurred. Since federal law requires election records to be retained for 22 months, the attorney portrayed Peters as protecting evidence rather than improperly accessing systems.
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After Polis granted her clemency, Peters issued an apology.
“I made mistakes, and for those I am sorry,” she said in a statement. “Five years ago I misled the Secretary of State when allowing a person to gain access to county voting equipment. That was wrong. I have learned and grown during my time in prison and going forward I will make sure that my actions always follow the law, and I will avoid the mistakes of the past.”
