A former Colorado elections clerk who became embroiled in conspiracy theories surrounding the 2020 election is set to walk free from prison Monday after her sentence was commuted, allowing her to serve less than a quarter of her original nine-year term for participating in a plot to duplicate her county’s voting system data.
Colorado Governor Jared Polis, a Democrat, reduced Tina Peters’ sentence last month after facing pressure from President Donald Trump.
State corrections officials declined to specify when Peters would be released, while a representative for her legal team indicated she would not be available for media interviews upon her release.
Peters made history as the first local election administrator to face criminal charges for security violations following the 2020 presidential election. She allowed an unauthorized computer specialist connected to My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell — who also disputed Trump’s 2020 election loss — to gain access and copy the county’s Dominion Voting Systems server during a 2021 software update.
Following the data breach, Peters appeared alongside Lindell at what was billed as a “cybersymposium” that claimed it would provide evidence the election had been manipulated. Video footage and images from the computer system update, complete with passwords, were subsequently published online. This action fueled unfounded allegations that voting equipment had been tampered with to deny Trump victory.
A jury in Mesa County, a Republican-leaning area that backed Trump, found Peters guilty in 2024 on charges including attempting to influence a public servant, conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, violation of duty, and additional offenses. While an appeals court confirmed her conviction in April, it mandated a new sentencing hearing, ruling that the original judge improperly considered her public statements about election fraud as grounds for punishment.
Although Trump had advocated for Peters’ case, his presidential powers did not extend to pardoning her since she was convicted under state rather than federal law. The president instead applied pressure on Polis to act, criticizing him publicly on social media and excluding him from a White House gathering of governors. The Trump administration also announced it would eliminate the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado and moved the U.S. Space Command headquarters to Alabama.
On May 15, Polis reduced Peters’ sentence. In his written explanation, he acknowledged that while Peters had been found guilty of serious offenses and deserved imprisonment, her sentence was “extremely unusual and lengthy” for someone with no prior criminal record facing non-violent charges.
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, condemned the decision as a “dark day for democracy” and accused Polis of “selling out our state’s justice system for Trump.”
