FORT COLLINS, Colo. (AP) — Members of Colorado’s Democratic Party delivered a stinging rebuke to their own governor, formally censuring Gov. Jared Polis after he shortened the prison term of Tina Peters, a former election official who promoted conspiracy theories supporting President Donald Trump’s unfounded allegations of widespread fraud in the 2020 election.
Wednesday’s censure vote passed by an overwhelming margin, with approximately 90% of the state party’s roughly 700 Central Committee members supporting the measure. The action bars Polis, who is serving his final year due to term limits, from serving as a distinguished guest, keynote speaker, or official party representative at Democratic events.
Peters, age 70, previously worked as a county clerk before receiving a nine-year prison sentence following her 2024 conviction for orchestrating a plan to duplicate her county’s election computer system.
Following Polis’s decision to commute her sentence on Friday, Peters is now scheduled for release on June 1.
Trump has publicly supported Peters’ situation. The Colorado Democratic Party released a statement calling the sentence reduction a “dangerous and disappointing” precedent during a time when democratic institutions and voting rights face threats across the country.
“It sends a message to future bad actors that election tampering has consequences, unless you’re friends with the president,” the statement said.
Roughly 700 party members, including sitting and former elected officials, signed a petition demanding the party condemn Polis. The censure vote occurred during a scheduled virtual meeting of the party’s Central Committee.
A Colorado appeals court upheld Peters’ conviction in April while ordering a new sentencing hearing, determining the original judge improperly penalized her for making public statements about election fraud.
When commuting the sentence, Polis wrote to Peters acknowledging she merited incarceration but had received an “extremely unusual and lengthy” punishment for someone with no prior convictions and no violent offenses.
Following the censure vote, he stood by his decision.
“The governor made this decision based on the facts of the case and what he believed was the right thing to do. Sometimes the right thing isn’t the popular thing with everybody. Democracy is strongest when disagreement is met with debate and dialogue, not censorship,” Polis spokesperson Eric Maruyama said in an emailed statement Thursday.
Peters expressed gratitude to Polis and offered an apology for her actions in a statement released after her sentence was commuted.
Peters secretly brought in an outside computer specialist, who was connected to MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, to duplicate her county’s Dominion Voting Systems election server during a scheduled system update in 2021. She later appeared with Lindell at a “cybersymposium” that claimed it would present evidence of election manipulation, and images from the upgrade process, including security passwords, were published online.
