On Wednesday, Colorado Democrats held a Central Committee virtual meeting and voted overwhelmingly to censure Gov. Jared Polis over his commutation of Tina Peters’ prison sentence, the Associated Press reported.
The party said the decision followed Polis’s clemency for Peters, a former county clerk whose case has been tied by supporters to election conspiracy claims. The party’s censure action treats the governor’s choice as an affront to party values on election integrity, while Polis and his allies argued the commutation was tied to the case record.
The censure vote passed with support from about 90% of the state party’s roughly 700 Central Committee members, according to the AP. The censure bars Polis, who is term-limited and in his final year in office, from being an honored guest, featured speaker, or officially recognized party representative at party-sponsored events.
Peters, 70, was sentenced to nine years behind bars after a 2024 conviction tied to a scheme to make a copy of her county’s election computer system. She was set to be released June 1 after Polis commuted her sentence Friday.
The AP also reported that Peters previously faced an appeals court outcome in April. The court upheld her conviction but ordered she be resentenced, saying the judge had wrongly punished her for speaking out about election fraud.
The Colorado Democratic Party said the commutation set an inappropriate precedent, contending that democracy and voting rights were already under attack nationwide. In a statement, the party said the decision reduced her sentence set a “dangerous and disappointing” precedent and warned that it sends a message to future bad actors that election tampering has consequences unless you are friends with the president, according to the AP.
Polis defended the commutation after the censure vote. “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,” Eric Maruyama, the governor’s spokesperson, said in an emailed statement Thursday.
The AP further reported that Peters thanked Polis and apologized for her crime in a statement after the commutation. The underlying case involved Peters bringing an outside computer expert linked to MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell to make a copy of a Dominion Voting Systems election computer server during a system upgrade in 2021, and Peters later joined Lindell onstage at a “cybersymposium” promoting proof of election rigging.
The party’s censure vote came after about 700 state party members, including current and former elected officials, petitioned the party to condemn Polis. By placing Polis under party discipline shortly after his commutation decision, the Democrats effectively signaled they were willing to confront their own leadership when they viewed the clemency as incompatible with their stated election-integrity principles.