A former Colorado county clerk sentenced to nearly nine years in prison for providing unauthorized access to 2020 election voting data had her sentence commuted Friday by Democratic Gov. Jared Polis.

Tina Peters, who served as Mesa County Clerk during the presidential contest between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, will be released on parole June 1.

She had been convicted in 2024 of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, official misconduct, violation of duty, and failure to comply with secretary of state requirements before being sentenced to eight years and three months in state prison.

Her mandatory release date had been set for 2033, while she would have been eligible for parole in 2028.

Polis told the New York Times that Peters’ commutation was not meant to mollify President Trump — who had repeatedly called for her release while claiming without evidence that the 2020 election was “rigged” against him — but was done because the clerk “was given an unusually harsh sentence.”

“She committed a crime. She deserves to be a convicted felon,” said Polis, who added that it was important to send the message that “free speech” is supported “in our country” — though the governor added that Peters’ contention about the 2020 results remained “dangerously incorrect.”

The governor also noted that Peters “owns up” to her wrongdoing in her application for commutation, admitted it was wrong to allow outside access to voting machines in 2020 and pledged to “always follow the law” going forward.

The governor also noted that Peters “owns up” to her wrongdoing in her application for commutation, admitted it was wrong to allow outside access to voting machines in 2021 and pledged to “always follow the law” going forward.

Trump, en route back to Washington from a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, reacted to the news by posting “FREE TINA!” on his Truth Social account.

A state appeals court upheld Peters’ conviction in April, but overturned her original sentence, ruling that the case judge wrongfully enhanced the penalty to punish the ex-clerk for speaking out against election fraud.

Polis intervened before a new sentence could be handed down and before Peters’ attorneys appealed her conviction to the Colorado Supreme Court.

Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat who tried to get Trump thrown off the 2024 ballot, said Friday that the commutation would “validate and embolden the election denial movement and leave a dark, dangerous imprint on American democracy for years to come.”

Peters was convicted of sneaking in an outside computer expert, an associate of MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, to make a copy of Mesa County’s Dominion Voting Systems election computer server as state officials updated it in 2021. 

After Peters joined Lindell onstage at a “cybersymposium” that promised to reveal proof of election rigging, video and photos of the upgrade, including passwords, were posted online.

Trump defeated Biden by 28 percentage points in 2020 in Mesa County, a Republican stronghold in the western part of Colorado. The presidential contest had already been certified by the time Peters gave the Lindell ally access to voter data.

“Our system of government can’t function when people in government think that somehow, some way, power they have been given is absolute in all respects,” district court judge Matthew Barrett told Peters when handing down her sentence. 

Colorado was one of five blue states that had federal funds for welfare programs frozen in January by the Trump administration, The Post first reported. Roughly $300 million was on the chopping block.

More than $100 million in other environmentally friendly grants from the Department of Transportation and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were yanked from the state between December and February.

Polis denied to The Times that the commutation decision was related to the funding fight with the Trump administration, saying: “That’s not something I ever considered.”

The Peters commutation follows Trump’s pardon of more than 1,500 individuals who were charged in connection with the breach of the US Capitol that stalled certification of Biden’s victory on Jan. 6, 2021.

On Dec. 31, 2025, the president posted on his Truth Social: “God Bless Tina Peters, who is now, for two years out of nine, sitting in a Colorado Maximum Security Prison … for the ‘crime’ of trying to stop the massive voter fraud that goes on in her State (where people are leaving in record numbers!).”

“Hard to wish her a Happy New Year, but to the Scumbag Governor, and the disgusting ‘Republican’ (RINO!) DA, who did this to her (nothing happens to the Dems and their phony Mail In Ballot System that makes it impossible for a Republican to win an otherwise very winnable State!), I wish them only the worst. May they rot in Hell. FREE TINA PETERS!”