Colorado Governor Signals He’ll Commute Sentence of Election Denier
The New York Times • • general
Key Points:
- Colorado Governor Jared Polis signaled he might commute the nine-year sentence of Tina Peters, a Republican former county clerk convicted of tampering with voting machines related to the 2020 election.
- President Trump has pressured Polis to free Peters, retaliating against Colorado by blocking federal funds, relocating the U.S. Space Command, and vetoing key state projects.
- Commuting Peters’s sentence could ease tensions with Trump but risks backlash from Democrats and moderate Republicans in Colorado, potentially harming Polis’s political standing.
- Polis compared Peters’s sentence to that of Democratic state senator Sonya Jaquez Lewis, who received a lighter punishment for similar felony convictions, suggesting Peters’s sentence may have been excessively harsh.
