The NPR Politics Podcast - Why did Governor Polis release election denier Tina Peters?

Episode Date: June 3, 2026

Former Colorado county clerk Tina Peters was released from prison this week, after Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis commuted her sentence. Peters was convicted of tampering with voting machines after the 2020 presidential election. We discuss what to make of Peters’ release, plus the dozens of election deniers running for political offices that oversee state and local elections.This episode: political correspondent Ashley Lopez, voting correspondent Miles Parks, and Colorado Public Radio reporter Bente Birkeland.This podcast was produced by Bria Suggs and edited by Rachel Baye.Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics podcast. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. And I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. And Colorado Public Radio's Benta Berklin is here. Hi, Benta. It's always so nice to have you. Thanks so much for having me. Today on the show, we're talking about the infamous election denier and former Colorado County Clerk Tina Peters, who literally got out of jail this week after Democratic Governor Jared Polis commuted her sentence. We're going to dig into all of that. But first, Benta, can you please remind us why Peters, was in prison in the first place? Yes, absolutely. And this has been a really long saga. It started when she was just a first-term clerk in Western Colorado.

She ran elections, but she was listening to people in the mega movement who had concerns that the voting machines flipped votes to President Biden in the 2020 election. So about six months later, Peters and others came up with this plan to copy Mesa County's election equipment hard drives, sneak someone into this software update. and the update highly secure situation conducted by the company that makes the machines, dimming voting systems, and the state. So to get her guy in, Peters had security credentials made under a false identity. And I'll say that it took years to get through the courts.

But Peters was eventually convicted of misdemeanors, felonies, things like official misconduct. And she was sentenced in 2024 to nearly nine years in prison. Wow. She served, you know, roughly 600 days in prison. You know, she was never intended to spend probably the full nine years behind bars. But a lot of people in the state felt like she should have served the full sentence or just let the courts decide because the appeals court had ordered her to be resentenced. So the governor's commutation negates that. Yeah.

That is a lot of stuff to imagine someone who works in elections to do. I wonder why then did pollus commutely. her sentence. I mean, was it this pressure campaign that President Trump initiated? I mean, he talked about this on social media for months. What eventually led to Polis feeling like it was worth commuting her? Yes. I mean, I think a lot of people have this exact question you're asking because Governor Jared Polis, he's term limited. He's served eight years in office, a Democratic governor. He's in a blue state. Trump is not popular with voters in Colorado. And you're right, the president really pushed Colorado in the last year to try to release her.

Trump has said she was a political prisoner, has said Colorado's governor should rot in hell. So it did take a lot of people off guard. And Polis said ultimately he was concerned about the length of the sentence. He said it was just too harsh. And this was backed up by the Colorado Court of Appeals. The court upheld her conviction, said the trial was fair. But when she was sentenced, the judge gave this blister. during speech attacking her. And the governor thought Peter's got a longer sentence because of her

quote, nutty beliefs, just being an election denier. I think it's outrageous that anybody, you know, spreads lies about elections, but free speech is a cornerstone of our, of our constitutional rights and our democracy. And that should not have been a factor in sentencing. And I think that's one of the reasons this is invokes such passion in people who think that she was punished for her free speech. and it went above and beyond a normal punishment for this kind of thing. And it did. Yeah, and I do think it's just worth underlining as well exactly why Peters matters so much. You know, when you think about what happened and this broad effort to overturn and disrupt the 2020 election that involved multiple states, honestly, dozens, if not hundreds of people doing all sorts of

different separate acts to try to undermine those results, all being led at the top by President Trump and Rudy Giuliani, you know, Tina Peters is the only person who was in prison as a result of that at this point. And so the idea that she is walking free now ahead of the 2026 midterms has a lot of people feeling unsatisfied that anyone had any sort of accountability for that plot. So, Benta, can you tell us how Democrats respond? Because I would imagine many in the state aren't happy right now with Polars. I would say that is an extreme understatement. I mean, he'd been signaling this commutation, but when it actually... actually happened, I have never had my inbox flooded with more angry remarks about polis.

I mean, it was just rapid fire from every single Democrat in the state, I could imagine. Former governors, U.S. senators, statewide elected officials, every single lawmaker, on and on and on. And just days later, the state took this unprecedented step. Democratic Party banned the governor from speaking at party functions. They also censured polis and basically gave him the biggest rebuke they possibly could legally. And I think it just speaks to what Miles said. This was seen as a much larger message to the country. Democrats in Colorado felt the governor's decision was entirely reckless, damaging, destructive. I mean, I could go on with adjectives. And people just said, why is he even doing this? Just leave this up to the courts. Yeah. I mean, Miles, maybe it's

worth stressing that Polis didn't like pardon Peters. He commuted her sentence. Like she's still a convicted felon. I mean, does that matter? I mean, yes, she's released from prison, but she still has a record. I mean, does that matter when we're talking about her being held accountable for tampering with voting machines? Right. I mean, that's factually true, but I do think that's a subtlety that is going to be lost on many people. I mean, I'm just curious to see over the next couple weeks, whether the narrative, as I'm guessing it will be in the election denial community, will be that this was a person who was wrongly convicted and this is the governor admitting that. Obviously, that's not what actually happened. But that is not necessarily mean. That's not what. people, especially people who are incentivized to think that way, will take away from it. I think there's like this bigger question that we're also going to be dealing with for the rest of the year and really ahead of 2028 is that when you talk about any sort of criminal punishment, a big question is, is this going to deter people from similar behavior moving forward? And so if you think about a

person who did what Peters did serving less than two years in prison, then you come out and you're basically a political hero to a portion of the Republican Party. I don't know that that is going to deter people from acting similarly. And I think when you look at the response, especially the response from election officials who were so angry, upset, dismayed by this, they definitely do not think people will be deterred from similar behavior. And I think some of their worst fears, it's kind of happened, you know, immediately after Peters was released from prison, she appeared on Steve Bannon's podcast, War Room.

And she talked about some of her false claims about elections, which she's always stood by the actions she took in Mesa County. I know that the Democrats are going to cheat. And no one's really addressing the problem that I spent my time in prison as retribution for. And that was exposing the election machines that allow the votes to be flipped. Yeah. I mean, I feel like we should say, like, to be clear, the voting machines did not change

anyone's votes the way she alleges. But, I mean, what do you guys? make of the fact like this was what she did as soon as she got out of prison is to pick up where she left off claiming that Democrats cheated in the election. Yeah, I mean, it reminds me, honestly, a couple of years ago I covered a defamation trial involving Rudy Giuliani where he was eventually forced to pay close to $150 million to two Georgia election officials that he defamed. And we're in court in that hearing and they're going through all the horrible repercussions that these women face as a result of this misinformation. It's very clear that there's no truth to these

allegations and then after court adjourns every day, Giuliani goes outside outside of the courtroom and is pushing similar election misinformation in a press conference outside the courtroom. And so I think it goes back to what experts always tell me in the last few years that there's a sort of election denial infrastructure that has popped up around the 2020 election, around making content and pushing claims around election misinformation. And none of that has been disrupted. So there is no reason to think that when Peters was released that this wasn't going to happen. I don't think I'd be very surprised if anyone in the election space was surprised by seeing this. And I think she will have as much national spotlight as she wants. She's a sympathetic character for that movement,

a 70-year-old woman, a gold star mom, and she is hailed as a hero for a lot of people. And our station talked to Republican Matt Crane. He's the head of the Colorado County Clerks Association. and he's a former clerk. And he said it just has a lot of negative downstream implications when this type of misinformation keeps circulating this widely. She's going to continue her campaign against voting systems, which is fueled by lies and disinformation. And so all of that disinformation really has an aggregating effect where it goes out.

It brainwashes people. They think there's problems with these machines. We had an office in Colorado, an election office in Archelitic County. that was firebombed about a year ago, about a year to right now. And the suspect seems to be influenced by a lot of these election lies about voting systems. Miles, I am curious, though, about like what kind of atmosphere this is creating, heading into a midterm election where Republicans are expected to possibly lose some power and Democrats have a good chance of flipping some seats in Congress. Overall, this is an electoral environment that is not super favorable to Republicans. and yet here we have the early drum beats of Democrats cheat in elections.

I mean, like, what do you make of like the atmosphere this is creating? Yeah, I mean, I think coming out of the 2024 election, a lot of people had warm and fuzzy feelings about where we were at in terms of election security and a lot of these narratives because there was by and large no fraud narratives that took wide hold after the 2024 election. But 2026 is shaping up to be really different. You know, misinformation. Experts always say it thrives in times when people. are surprised by results.

Then you've got President Trump, other people been planning the seats for years, frankly, that Democrats can't win without fraud. And so then when you look at an electoral map that is shaping up favorably for Democrats and where polling shows that there are Democratic candidates who have a real shot to win its Senate seats in Texas, in Alaska, even in places like Iowa,

results that would be very surprising where voters would be kind of grasping for answers as to how this could have happened. Those are environments, where these sort of election denial narratives really take hold. And so it is looking like a very fertile environment potentially. Yeah. What an unfun, ground how day. All right, we're going to take a quick break more in a moment. Welcome back. And, Maz, actually, you've reported that there are dozens of election deniers running for positions with power over how elections are administered at both

the state and local levels. Can you give us a few examples? Yeah, I feel like this is one of those stories that has kind of been swept under the rug with all the other things that we're reporting on in 2026. But I reported recently that in almost half the country, including in five presidential swing states, people who have a history of election denial are running for positions that will have a role in certifying future elections. That's either the governor or the secretary of state in these states. And this is according to tracking that was done by an organization called states United Action. One state that I want to zoom in on that I think is really interesting is Arizona. This is a state that Trump still says he won in 2020. And at the time, he pressured the Republican governor there,

a guy named Doug Ducey, to interfere in the certification process. Ducey declined to do so. It was eventually certified that Joe Biden won that state. But a Republican is now running for governor in Arizona named Andy Biggs. He's a congressperson who has a history of election denial, who actually worked when he was in Congress to interfere in the certification of the 2020 election. And he is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination to be governor in Arizona. And so You know, it's kind of unknowable how somebody like Andy Biggs would respond in a similar situation to 2020. But the fact that he has already acted in the past to push forward some of this election misinformation, obviously raises a lot of questions about what he could do or how he would act in a similar situation should he be elected. Well, I do want to get a sense of scale here.

We are a couple election cycles out now from 2020. Are there more election dinners running than in past elections or is this been pretty much consistent in the past couple cycles? Yeah, this is interesting, actually. It seems like at this point the number of election deniers running in these races is actually down compared to recent cycles, which the organization that did this tracking attributed to this actually being a bad campaign strategy in these specific races. And NPR actually did, I did my own analysis after 2022 that found the same thing that basically found that Republicans who were running on a campaign around election denial were running for positions, specifically the secretary of state races that have such. an intimate role in how people vote, that they actually underperformed other Republicans on the ticket. And so it seems like when people are specifically asked, who do you want to run elections in your state, they don't seem to be drawn to this idea of election denial. Well, that does make me think about like a pet theory I have, which is that a lot of what's

driving these kinds of candidates is mostly in the Republican base. Like, these are MAGA voters. Like, this isn't widespread. I mean, would you agree with that? Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think that. There's polling from UC San Diego, it was done recently, found that less than a third of Americans believe the 2020 election was stolen, for instance. But I do think there's kind of two contradictory messages that I've personally, as a voting reporter, been trying to figure out, is that how that can simultaneously be true. But it's also worth noting here that President Trump has been not shy about talking about the fact that he thinks the 2020 election was stolen, and yet he won the popular vote in

24. And so while it seems like there is a small minority of voters who believe that fervently, I think there is a much larger universe of voters who are either open to those ideas or also aren't sure. I will also note that 15% in that poll I mentioned from UC San Diego, 15% of voters said they didn't know if the 2020 election was done fair and accurately. Yeah, I mean, Bento, we heard from a former county clerk, a Republican in Colorado, who doesn't agree with Tina Peters on this. So it seems like this isn't even like completely widespread among Republicans in Colorado. Yes, I think that's definitely right. Keep in mind, Colorado is a blue state, but most of the counties are rural and Republican. That means most of the people who run elections in Colorado are Republican clerks.

They vehemently push back against Peter's actions and what she did. The state has a lot of processes to validate the vote, the paper ballots and tallying them and audits and hand counts. So I would say it's a very vocal, loud minority amplified by President Trump, who has the biggest megaphone. So that drowns out a lot of other people. Well, before we finish up here, I do want to know what you guys are going to be watching for in terms of like now the ability of Tina Peters to have a new chapter right before midterm election. What are you guys going to be looking out for? I would say in Colorado, one thing I'm looking out for is potential federal election

interference, and that would go in other states as well. But since I cover Colorado politics, our governor and Democrats just passed a bill, signed it into law to try to push back against potential federal interference. So it allows voters to have more time to vote by mail, open up drop boxes earlier, allows the state to declare an election emergency to provide more flexibility. So that's the biggest thing on mine for November, especially in these close swing districts. I mean, for me, I think it's an important moment to note just how important local election officials are. in the process, and there are thousands and thousands of them across the country. And so when you think about the midterm elections and where the midterms, at least at control of the House level, will be decided it is going to be spread out across the country in a bunch of different states.

It's not just in the, you know, half a dozen presidential swing states. And so these local election officials, many people who we have not heard of yet, may, we may, there may be a lot of names that we hear in the next six months when it comes to election administration that could be important that we just don't even know about yet. I think it's a good reminder of that. Yeah. All right. Let's leave it there for today. Thanks so much for joining us, Benta. Thanks. It was my pleasure. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. And I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. And if the show helps you keep up with the crazy fast pace of political news, please make sure you don't miss an episode. Hit the follow button wherever

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