FORT COLLINS, COLORADO — Colorado Democrats voted overwhelmingly to censure their governor, Jared Polis Reducing the prison sentence Tina Peters, the election conspiracy theorist who boosted President Donald Trump’s baseless claims that mass fraud caused him to lose the 2020 election.
About 90% of the party’s nearly 700 Central Committee members voted Wednesday to censure. That means Polis, who is term-limited and serving his final year in office, will be barred from being an honored guest, featured speaker or officially recognized representative of the party at party-sponsored events.
Peters, 70, is a former county clerk who was sentenced to nine years in prison After his conviction in 2024 for a plan to make a copy of her county’s election computer system.
She is scheduled to be released on June 1 after Police commuted her sentence on Friday.
Trump has championed Peters’ case. The Colorado Democratic Party said in a statement that commuting her sentence sets a “dangerous and disappointing” precedent when democracy and voting rights are under attack across the country.
“It sends a message to future bad actors that election manipulation has consequences, unless you are a friend of the president,” the statement said.
About 700 state party members, including current and former elected officials, petitioned the party to convict Polis. The subsequent censure vote was held at a regularly scheduled virtual meeting of the party’s Central Committee.
In April, the Colorado Court of Appeals upheld Peters’ conviction but ordered her re-sentencing, saying the judge wrongly punished her for speaking out about election fraud.
In reducing her sentence, Polis told Peters in a letter that she deserved a prison sentence, but was given an “extraordinary and extremely long” sentence for a non-violent first-time offender.
He defended the commutation after the censure vote.
“The governor made this decision based on the facts of the case and what he believes is the right thing to do,” Police spokesman Eric Maruyama said in an emailed statement Thursday. “Sometimes, the right thing is not what is popular with everyone. Democracy is stronger when disagreement is met with debate and dialogue, not censorship.”
Peters thanked Police and apologized for her crime in a statement after the sentence was reduced.
Peters infiltrated an outside computer expert, an associate of MyPillow CEO Mike LindellTo make a copy of Dominion Voting Systems’ election computer server in her county during a system upgrade in 2021. She then joined Lindell on stage for a “webinar” that promised to uncover evidence of election fraud, and images of the upgrade, including passwords, were posted online.