Colorado Gov. Jared Polis on Friday cut former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters’ nine-year prison sentence in half, and ordered the 70-year-old, who has become a national martyr for election conspiracy theorists, to be released on parole June 1.
Peters’ sentence for orchestrating a security breach of her county’s election system in 2021 in a failed attempt to uncover voter fraud is now four years and four and a half months under a clemency order issued by the governor.
“She, because of her incorrect and unpopular speech, got an unduly harsh sentence,” Polis said Friday in an interview with The Colorado Sun, adding that he believes her new sentence is still “very harsh.”
“I’m not pardoning her,” he explained. “I publicly have said very early on I would not even consider a pardon. She’s a convicted felon. She deserves to be a convicted felon. She will remain a convicted felon.”
The extraordinary, but expected, decision puts Polis at odds not only with fellow Democrats, but also with many Republicans in Colorado — including the man who prosecuted Peters and a list of conservative local elections officials outraged by Peters’ behavior.
“This signals that it’s open season on our elections and election officials,” said Matt Crane, who leads the Colorado Clerks Association. Crane is a Republican and the former clerk in Arapahoe County.
Peters, in a post on social media, thanked Polis and said she was sorry for the mistakes she made. But she also indicated she planned to continue talking about elections.
“I plan to do my best through legal means to support election integrity,” she said. “I am grateful for a second chance and an earlier release, and I love forward to doing good in the world.”
The governor’s move — which comes as Polis and Colorado have faced mounting criticism and retaliation from President Donald Trump — also likely ends any speculation about his political future as a Democrat. By commuting Peters’ sentence, Polis, who has been mentioned as a possible presidential contender, has probably neutered any chance of rising in his party’s ranks.
“FREE TINA!” Trump posted on social media Friday afternoon after the clemency news was announced.
The governor’s closest advisers have privately counseled him against inserting himself in Peters’ case, warning of the intense political risks.
Polis’ decision, which came as he announced clemency for dozens of other people convicted of crimes in Colorado, will also likely cast a pall over his last six months in office and make him a pariah among fellow Democrats. He is term-limited and cannot run for reelection in 2026.
The governor brushed off the political consequences of his decision.
“I view my job as governor as one where I always try to do what’s right,” he said. “Ultimately, I believe people like me because I try to do what’s right. I try to do what’s right regardless of whether it’s popular and regardless of the politics of it.”
By waiting until two days after Colorado’s 2026 lawmaking term ended to announce the clemency decision, Polis avoided damage to his legislative agenda. Democrats at the Capitol had telegraphed that they wouldn’t work with the governor if he let Peters out.
But by not waiting until later in the year, his announcement interrupts the judicial process.
Peters’ conviction
Mesa County District Judge Matthew Barrett was preparing to resentence Peters as directed by the Colorado Court of Appeals, which found in April that the nine-year sentence he issued “was based in part on improper consideration of her exercise of her right to free speech.”
“Her offense was not her belief, however misguided the trial court deemed it to be, in the existence of such election fraud,” the appellate judges wrote. “It was her deceitful actions in her attempt to gather evidence of such fraud.”
A date for her resentencing hasn’t been set.
Polis told The Sun he opted to wait until after the Colorado Court of Appeals ruled on Peters’ challenge to her sentence before taking action.
“I had many of the same concerns that the appeals court,” he said, “which was basically that because of her unpopular and incorrect conspiracy beliefs, she was punished more harshly than usual for a crime that she committed. I’m a strong supporter of free speech. I share and vehemently disagree with the way Tina Peters chooses to use her free speech. But it’s a free country, she’s free to do it.”
But the governor did not explain Friday, when asked, why he didn’t wait for Barrett to resentence her.
Peters was convicted in August 2024 of three counts of attempting to influence a public official; conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation; official misconduct; violation of duty; and failure to comply with an order of the Secretary of State.
A Mesa County jury acquitted Peters of three counts: conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, criminal impersonation and identity theft.
Peters and others persuaded a Mesa County computer engineer to join her office as a part-time computer expert in the elections office. The man, Gerald Wood, went through a background check and was given a badge for access to secure elections rooms.
But he never entered those rooms. His access pass was instead given to Conan Hayes, an election conspiracy theorist, who used Wood’s identity to attend a sensitive election system software update.
Photos taken during the update were then posted on the internet, a major security breach that led Mesa County to discard its voting equipment and buy new machines.
The scheme was part of an effort by Peters to uncover election fraud in Mesa County and across the country following false claims by Trump that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
Trump, who has fought for Peters’ release and symbolically pardoned her, won Mesa County in 2020 by 28 percentage points.
Local prosecutors investigated the election malfeasance claims made by Peters, based on the “evidence” collected during the Mesa County security breach, and found nothing.
Swift condemnation from Democrats
Big-name politicians in Colorado were quick to condemn Polis’ decision Friday.
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, who was notified about the clemency action about an hour before it became public, told reporters it’s a “dark day for democracy”
Attorney General Phil Weiser, a Democrat whose office helped prosecute Peters, said it was “mind-boggling.”
“The judge imposed a reasonable sentence based on her criminal conduct, she has shown no remorse for her crimes, and now the governor is taking this unwise and unprecedented step of releasing her from prison early,” Weiser said in a written statement. “Caving to this president will only lead to more abuse from the bullying Trump administration. Today is a sad day for Colorado and the rule of law.”
Weiser is running to replace Polis as governor next year alongside U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, another Democrat, who said Friday that he vehemently disagrees with Polis cutting Peters’ sentence short.
Colorado Democratic Party Chairman Shad Murib said Polis set a “dangerous and disappointing precedent.”
“There are real cases that deserve the Governor’s attention and action,” Murib said. “This is not one of them.”
The Colorado County Clerks Association said it was “furious, disgusted and deeply disappointed.”
“Rather than standing with those public servants and defending one of our nation’s most cherished rights, the right to vote, Gov. Polis is bending the knee to the same political forces and conspiracy movements that are actively undermining confidence in our democratic institutions,” the organization said. “That choice carries consequences far beyond this single case.”
County clerks said they felt abandoned.
“There is no escaping the significance of this moment,” the statement said. “This is now Gov. Polis’ legacy. He will not be able to run from it or redefine it later. When given the opportunity to stand firmly for the rule of law, for the integrity of Colorado’s elections, and for the public servants who defend them, he chose a different path.”
Mesa County District Attorney Dan Rubinstein, the Republican who led the prosecution of Peters, called cutting Peters’ sentence short an “irresponsible act” driven by “a misguided and misunderstood reason.”
“Our system is designed for appellate courts to correct legal errors if they exist,” Rubinstein said. “That process was still underway, yet the governor chose to substitute his judgment for the courts, the sentencing judge, and the Mesa County community that bore the consequences of Ms. Peters’ actions.”
Rubinstein called it a “sad day for Mesa County citizens.”
Some Republicans celebrated Polis’ move.
U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Windsor, called it “a long-overdue step toward justice.”
Polis dropped many hints
Polis began dancing around the question of whether he would offer Peters clemency at the start of the year. He suggested to some journalists that he would consider letting the former clerk out of prison early. To others, he seemed to fully reject the idea.
At times, it was difficult to interpret what he was thinking.
“If she is very ill or has, you know, cancer, we would do something like we would for any nonviolent inmate in that situation — we consider getting them out,” he told The Colorado Sun in early January. “We’re always going to look at the sentence and how long and what it is. She is elderly.”
Then, in March, Polis all but said he was going to let Peters out. He went on social media to contrast Peters’ sentence to the probation sentence received by former Democratic state Sen. Sonya Jaquez Lewis.
Jaquez Lewis was sentenced to probation and community service, at the request of Denver prosecutors, after being convicted of one count of attempting to influence a public servant and three counts of forgery. The case stemmed from the Boulder County Democrat’s fabrication of letters of support that she sent to the Senate Ethics Committee, which was investigating Jaquez Lewis’ treatment of her Capitol aides.
“It is not lost on me that she was convicted of the exact same felony charge as Tina Peters — attempting to influence a public official — and yet Tina Peters, as a non-violent first time offender got a nine year sentence,” Polis wrote on X. “Justice in Colorado and America needs to be applied evenly, you never know when you might need to depend on the rule of law.”
After that post, all 66 Democrats in the Colorado legislature sent the governor a letter urging him not to let Peters out.
“This is about the security and assuredness of our elections,” the letter said. “This is about the future of our democracy, and of free and fair elections in our nation. We ask you to stand with us in safeguarding the future.”
The letter said that clemency is “for those who have taken accountability for their crimes, understand the harm they have created, and made good faith efforts for restitution to victims and self-rehabilitation.”
It’s true that the governor typically reserves his clemency powers for people who have shown remorse or rehabilitation in prison. Peters has not publicly admitted fault and has continued to fight her conviction on the grounds that she was improperly prosecuted.
But Polis said Peters admitted wrongdoing in her private clemency application.
“I made mistakes four years ago,” Polis read from her application. “I misled the secretary of state when allowing a person to gain access to county voting equipment. That was wrong. Going forward, I will make sure that my actions always follow the law, and I will avoid the mistakes of the past.”
But the governor added that nobody gets clemency from him just because they are sorry.
“That’s ridiculous,” he said. “Ninety-nine percent of prisoners would say they’re sorry if it got them out. It’s really about disparate sentences.”
Polis said he’s not sure how Peters will act, or what she will say, upon her release.
“I will almost certainly disagree with things she says in the future,” he said. “But it is a free country, and she is absolutely as entitled to say things that she believes as you, or as me, or as any other American — as long as she follows our laws.”
This is a developing story that will be updated.
Trump’s actions against Colorado
President Donald Trump has loudly, publicly and repeatedly objected to the conviction and sentencing of former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters for crimes related to an election system breach in 2021. For years, Trump’s complaints served primarily as a rallying cry for election conspiracy theorists. But after he returned to office in 2025, Peters’ conviction became one of a number of issues state officials believe was used to justify political retaliation against the state, with real impacts for Coloradans. Federal projects that had received bipartisan support have been refused funding while longtime research and employment centers have been shuttered, slashed or relocated.
- Disaster aid for wildfire and flood recovery — In December, Trump denied disaster funding to help northwestern Colorado recover from wildfires and southwestern Colorado recover from flooding.
- Rural clean water pipeline in southeastern Colorado — In December, Trump vetoed a bill that would have provided funding to complete the Arkansas Valley Conduit, a pipeline to carry clean water to communities in southeastern Colorado.
- Environmental transportation grants in Colorado — In December, the Trump administration canceled $109 million in transportation grants awarded to Colorado for projects with an environmental focus. The funds would have paid for increasing the use of electric vehicles and EV charging options, rail improvements and research into hydrogen and natural gas-powered trains.
- National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder — In December, the Trump administration vowed to break up NCAR, which has been headquartered in Boulder since 1960. The center employed more than 800 people.
- Relocating U.S. Space Command — In September, President Donald Trump announced that U.S. Space Command would relocate to Alabama from its temporary headquarters in Colorado Springs. Alabama and Colorado have long battled to claim Space Command. Trump said Colorado’s “very corrupt voting system” played a part in his decision.
- SNAP recertification — In December, the Trump administration issued an order that would have forced Colorado to recertify recipients of federal food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP. The order would have required the state to conduct in-person interviews with nearly 100,000 households before they could receive assistance, an impossible task state officials viewed as punishment. A federal judge in January blocked the order.