Why did Governor Polis release election denier Tina Peters?
6/3/202617 min
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.
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First 90 secondsSpeaker 10:00
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Ashley Lopez· Host0:29
[upbeat music] Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics.
Miles Parks· Host0:38
And I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting.
Ashley Lopez· Host0:40
And Colorado Public Radio's Bente Birkeland is here. Hi, Bente. It's always so nice to have you.
Bente Birkeland· Guest0:45
Thanks so much for having me.
Ashley Lopez· Host0:46
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, Bente, can you please remind us why Peters was in prison in the first place?
Bente Birkeland· Guest1:04
Yes, absolutely. And, and this has been a really [laughs] 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 MAGA movement- Mm ... 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,