March 04, 2026 09:30 AM UTC

Attention Gov. Polis: One Of These Felonies Is Not Like The Other

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• by: Colorado Pols

Last night, Gov. Jared Polis spontaneously re-ignited a debate that had been pushed out of the headlines in recent weeks after the matter was seemingly resolved: indicating that he may again be considering some form of clemency for convicted former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, who is serving a nine-year sentence in a Colorado state prison for her role in a crackpot scheme to allow election conspiracy theorists to access voting machine equipment with a stolen identity, in a failed attempt to generate evidence that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump. As 9NEWS’ Spencer Soicher reports:

Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis is sending his strongest signal yet that he will grant clemency to convicted former Mesa County clerk Tina Peters…

In a social media post on Tuesday night, Polis pointed to the case of a former Democratic state legislator who was sentenced to probation last week for the same charge that sent Peters to prison for her scheme to sneak into Colorado’s voting systems.

Peters is serving a nine-year sentence, and the governor’s post suggests Peters was harshly sentenced.

But the two cases are very different.

Denver7’s Robert Garrison:

Peters, who is pleading for clemency after a failed presidential pardon, was found guilty on seven state charges, four of which are felonies. She was convicted of orchestrating a data breach scheme based on false claims about voting machine fraud in the 2020 presidential race.

By contrast, Lewis was convicted of four felony counts for sending fraudulent letters of support to the Colorado Senate Ethics Committee, which was looking into claims she mistreated her employees.

Polis highlighted these differences in his post, stating, “It is not lost on me that [Lewis] was convicted of the exact same felony charge as Tina Peters — attempting to influence a public official — and yet Tina Peters, as a non-violent first time offender, got a nine year sentence.”

The response to Gov. Polis’ latest public musings about possible clemency for Peters was immediate and overwhelming. Naturally, Peters’ army of supporters were equal parts ecstatic and incensed, taking Polis’ statements as total vindication of Peters and raging that their “Gold Star Mom” would spend another night in prison after these apparent concessions. But for those who understand the world of difference between Tina Peters’ crimes and the misconduct that former state Sen. Sonya Jaquez Lewis was convicted of, the false equivalence Polis drew between the two was totally unacceptable.

This resulted in Polis taking more heat in less time than he even received after his ill-advised embrace of RFK Jr.

One of the more thoughtful responses to Polis surprisingly came from Ross Kaminsky, a Denver-based right-wing talk radio host:

This morning, former Republican Maricopa County, Arizona recorder Stephen Richer, who has been on the front lines of Trump’s election disinformation wars since 2020, directly addressed Gov. Polis:

Tina Peters got the guilty verdict she deserved. As you yourself said, she “was prosecuted by a Republican D.A. in a Republican county, convicted by a jury of her peers in a very Republican area in our state.” Her sentence is consistent with the gravity of our election administration responsibilities and the importance of elections in our country.

But now, it appears, you are open to lessening that sentence. Undoubtedly, the pressure being applied on you and the people in your state by Donald Trump is weighing heavily on this decision. His threats and acts of retribution have made your job harder and their lives more difficult. Colorado doesn’t deserve to have its water sources jeopardized. Colorado doesn’t deserve to lose the U.S. Space Command headquarters. Colorado doesn’t deserve the dismantling of your National Center for Atmospheric Research. And Colorado doesn’t deserve a phony investigation into your prisons.

But any commutation or pardon of Tina Peters’s sentence, outside of the normal parole or appeal process, would send a devastating message—both to the country and to all election officials.

If you grant Tina Peters clemency, how could we then continue to stomach the violent threats, endure the hateful emails, and even tolerate the skepticism of family members who have been fed lies about American elections? Our industry has lost many professionals in recent years. Many more would flee if Tina Peters is pardoned.

We want to start by saying again that we do understand the plight that Gov. Polis faces as the governor of a state facing pretty much continuous punishment from the Trump administration, resulting in adverse decisions that have cost our state thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in public investment. Much of this vengefulness is focused on Peters’ incarceration, but that’s not the whole motive after Colorado’s many affronts against Trump going back to the 2016 election cycle. While the state has had success in court mitigating the worst of Trump’s vengeance, the casualties are piling up from the Arkansas Valley to the laboratory formerly known as NREL.

But the underlying reality of Peters’ case hasn’t changed. Peters’ conviction on felony counts for her attempt to prove Trump’s conspiracy theories has become a proxy battleground not just for those conspiracy theories, but the integrity of American elections, and the sworn officials elected to conduct them. Tina Peters didn’t commit her crimes with a self-serving motive, other than perhaps to become another luminary of the election conspiracy movement. Peters did it because she believed Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 presidential election, and she believed she would be exonerated for her misconduct by proving the existence of a far greater conspiracy–the same conspiracy that Trump believes and promotes to this day, despite the lack of any evidence having ever emerged in all these years.

One of the key factors in any clemency decision should be the remorse shown by the individual seeking it. Tina Peters has not only failed to show any remorse for her misconduct, but she has become the icon for the election conspiracy movement she always wanted to be. Before Peters’ conviction, she pushed her pre-trial boundaries, traveling the country to proclaim the righteousness of defeating election system security she was in charge of to allow outside crackpots to tamper with voting machines. To reward Peters’ total lack of remorse with clemency would legitimize the baseless conspiracy theories that drove her to commit these felonies, just as Trump is ramping up attempts to meddle with midterm elections Republicans are expected to lose.

Sonya Jaquez Lewis’ case is about Sonya Jaquez Lewis, and nothing more. She did something incredibly stupid trying to save herself from herself.

Tina Peters’ case, on the other hand, has always been about more than Tina Peters. Holding Peters accountable is crucial to the defense of American democracy.

It’s not an easy burden for Colorado or Gov. Polis to bear, but the consequences of capitulation at this point would be much worse. Appeasing bullies historically rarely stops them.

With nothing but respect for Gov. Polis and the complexity of the decision, we join those imploring him not to do it.