Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) has granted clemency to Tina Peters, a former county clerk convicted on charges related to a scheme to bolster Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.
In 2022, prosecutors accused her of helping to secretly copy voting machine hard drives by allowing a computer expert into secure areas of her office using someone else’s security badge. Within months, data from her office appeared online.
A jury convicted Peters of seven charges, including four felonies, in 2024, and District Judge Matthew Barrett sentenced her to nine years in prison.
Gov. Jared Polis’ controversial commutation follows a pressure campaign by the Trump administration to free Tina Peters, an ex-county official who was convicted of tampering with election equipment. n.pr/4uMbo4k
— NPR (@npr.org) May 15, 2026 at 1:49 PM
From NPR:
The controversial decision follows a months-long pressure campaign from President Trump and his administration to free Peters from state custody.
In April, a state appeals court upheld Peters’ 2024 conviction but ruled that she should be re-sentenced, saying that the trial court judge who issued her nearly nine-year sentence improperly factored in her protected speech.
Peters was convicted for her role in facilitating a security breach of Mesa County’s voting machines when she was clerk and recorder.
The incident occurred six months after the 2020 election, as part of her effort to prove Trump’s baseless claims of a rigged election.
CNN reports that in her application for clemency, Peters acknowledged for the first time that she “made a mistake” and “misled” Colorado election officials.
In an interview today, Polis said that he was cutting Peters’ prison sentence in half, reducing it to 4.5 years. That means she could be paroled within a month, based on the time she has already served behind bars and Colorado’s early-release rules.
Peters was sentenced on October 3, 2024. On June 1, she will have spent more than 600 days incarcerated.
Polis is in his last year as governor due to term limits, and says that his decision is not an effort to curry favor with Trump. But trust and believe, this will be deeply unpopular with the people of Colorado.
Trump issued a pardon to Peters in December that was considered symbolic, because a president doesn’t have jurisdiction over state-level crimes.
The governor’s decision came after Trump cut hundreds of millions of dollars in federal money for Colorado.
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