Amidst the excess of news and outrage competing for our attention, much time and oxygen have been expended in trying to make sense of Jared Polis’s angst-ridden consideration of a sentence reduction for Tina Peters, former county clerk and now an ungrateful guest of the Colorado prison system.

For any just emerging from some deep cave, Peters was elected in 2018 to serve as Clerk of Mesa County, the largest locale on the Western Slope, and held that post for four eventful years.

In the first election under her supervision, a ballot box was found three months later in front of the election office. The box contained 574 ballots never collected or counted. Meaning that 574 voters were deprived of their franchise. Big oops.

Peters, the top election official in her county, mind you, also neglected to file her own financial disclosures for three full years. Her attitude was that of, “The law is for thee, but not for me.”

But all that pales to trifling insignificance next to Peters’ signature exploits following the 2020 election when she made herself a frontline member of President Trump’s election denial squad.

Flying around on private jets with erstwhile denier and chief pillow-fluffer Mike Lindell, Peters set out to spread the lie. Of course, that was her First Amendment privilege, no matter how vacuous and poisonous her case.

However, she chose not to limit herself to speaking out. She also acted out. It was those actions, not her wacky viewpoint, which led her to a prison cell.

She chose to allow an unauthorized person access to Mesa County’s electronic voting machines to surreptitiously copy the hard drives. That is more than an oops. By law, it is a felony.

Peters was prosecuted by a Republican district attorney and found guilty of seven counts by a Mesa County jury, hardly a left-leaning crowd. Those counts included multiple felonies. The jury, showing discernment, also acquitted her on three charges of the ten-count indictment.

In sentencing Peters to nine years of confinement, District Judge Matthew Barrett commented, “Your lies are well-documented and these convictions are serious. I am convinced you would do it all over again. You are as defiant a defendant as this court has ever seen.”

Through the trial and sentencing, Peters remained unrepentant. That is still the case to this day.

Though not a part of the criminal charges, Peters further demonstrated her defiance and criminality by ordering that surveillance cameras monitoring voting equipment in her office be turned off and then allowing QAnon activist Conan Hayes to copy sensitive information from those machines.

To further demonstrate the sterling character of this woman who has become a cause celebre for fervent MAGA types, during the investigation Peters attempted to kick a local police officer merely going about his job and serving her with a search warrant. Peters was proud of that incident and has been known to demonstrate for others her particular kicking technique.

That is the individual at the center of this debate. Consistent with his intention to absolve all 2020 election deniers of any criminal liability, our president has granted Peters a “pardon.” That edict has about as much efficacy as a degree from Trump University.

Peters was convicted of state crimes. Trump’s ability to help her out is limited to that of bluff and bluster. The one person with actual authority is Gov. Jared Polis now in the final year of his tenure.

Polis is said to be seriously weighing a sentence commutation. Plenty of critics are busy ascribing endless political motives to a potential act of mercy.

My own assessment is different. I don’t perceive that the guv is playing some game of three-dimensional chess in advance of a future political venture. Were this simply a political calculation, he would step far back and let Peters rot away.

Rather, my suspicion is that Polis is relegating politics to a backseat and is earnestly ruminating on questions such as Peters’ age and perhaps the proportionality of her sentence relative to other white-collar convictions. Colorado’s pattern of light sentencing and leniency around first-time offenses might also enter his equation.

Still, even if Polis’s motives tend toward the pure and just in this instance, a commutation would be a mistake. Trump has threatened Colorado with all manner of retribution for Peters’ imprisonment among other presidential objections. He went so far as to issue his first veto of this term on a rather uncontentious bill to fund the Arkansas Valley water conduit. Such is his degree of spite.

The first rule of dealing with bullies is that appeasement rarely works. While carving a few years off Peters’ sentence might temporarily open up some federal funds, it would only signal weakness to a president with a nose for it. The inevitable result would be more intimidation and demands.

Beyond that, following January 6 and the revival of a Trump presidency, America faces no larger imperative than the restoration of the sanctity of our elections and respect for their outcomes. Peters was a knowing, willful player in undermining much that we should hold dear.

Tina Peters is far more than some prototypical, run-of-the-mill, white-collar crook. She is a way station on a path to a very dark future of disfigurement of American democracy. In her zeal, she exhibited no grace and has not earned ours.

She did the crime; now let her do the time.

Eric Sondermann is a Colorado-based independent political commentator. He writes regularly for ColoradoPolitics and the Gazette newspapers. Reach him at EWS@EricSondermann.com; follow him at @EricSondermann.