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When Colorado Gov. Jared Polis first signaled that he was considering clemency or a commutation for Tina Peters, a former county clerk who was convicted for helping to breach her county’s election systems in an effort to uncover fraud in the 2020 election, election officials urged him against it.
Pam Anderson, another former county clerk who defeated Peters in the 2022 Republican primary for secretary of state, in January accused Polis of “enabl[ing] violent, lying, bullying criminals” by considering clemency. Caleb Thornton, a lawyer for the Colorado secretary of state’s office who testified at Peters’ trial, wrote in February that the possibility of a commutation was “a slap in the face to all election officials around the country.”
Their pleas didn’t work. On Friday, Polis, a Democrat, said he would commute Peters’ sentence; she is expected to be freed on parole June 1. In a commutation letter and press interviews, Polis said he believed her sentence of nearly nine years in prison was too harsh for a first-time nonviolent offender, and that the severity of her sentence was based in part on what he said was her incorrect belief in conspiracy theories about election fraud — not solely her illegal actions.