BREAKING: Former Election Clerk Tina Peters Will Be FREED By Colorado Governor

This has been long-awaited!

Former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, who became a household name among conservatives for her efforts to uncover election fraud in the state of Colorado, will be freed from state prison.

Peters, who is a gold star mom, was sentenced to prison in October of 2024 on charges of tampering with election equipment.

Democrat Governor Jared Polis has announced he will grant clemency to Peters, which would allow her to be released from custody in the upcoming weeks.

CNN reported more on Polis’ move to free Peters:

Tina Peters, the Republican former election clerk imprisoned for crimes related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election, will receive clemency from Colorado’s Democratic Gov. Jared Polis and soon be released from custody, Polis exclusively told CNN.

The decision followed a previously unreleased statement in Peters’ clemency application, obtained by CNN from Polis’ office, in which Peters acknowledged for the first time since her 2024 conviction that she “made a mistake” and “misled” Colorado election officials.

Polis said in an interview Friday that he was cutting Peters’ prison sentence in half, reducing it to 4.5 years. He said that meant she could be paroled within a month, based on the time she has already served behind bars and Colorado’s early-release rules.

A jury in conservative-leaning Mesa County convicted Peters in 2024 of conspiring with fellow election deniers to breach her county’s election systems in hopes of proving President Donald Trump’s baseless 2020 voter-fraud claims.

Trump has waged a long pressure campaign against Colorado over Peters’ incarceration. She is the last Trump ally still in prison for 2020 election-related crimes.

“I made a mistake four years ago,” Peters said in the statement released Friday. “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.”

Polis said he agrees with a recent appeals court ruling which found that the trial judge improperly punished Peters for her protected speech about the 2020 election, telling CNN he’d like others to come to the same conclusion as the court. But he knows, especially among Democrats in his state and beyond, that’s going to be tough.

“I hope that Democrats don’t sacrifice our deeply held belief in free speech because of political expediency or disregard for what people are saying,” Polis said. “There should be no consideration of what we say, how unpopular it is, how inaccurate it is in sentencing or in criminal proceedings.”

Listen to Polis explain his reasoning for releasing Peters below:

🚨 BREAKING: Colorado Gov. Jared Polis has now CONFIRMED he has commuted Tina Peters’ sentence, saying he believes the election whistleblower’s free speech rights were violated

Polis says the judge “held her speech against her.”

Peters will OFFICIALLY be free in just a couple… https://t.co/sX7GjhXplE pic.twitter.com/qxtbqSqltU

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) May 15, 2026

President Trump has been consistent in calling for Polis to release Peters:

🚨 BREAKING: Election fraud whistleblower TINA PETERS IS BEING RELEASED FROM PRISON after MASSIVE pressure from President Trump

Let's go!!! 👏🏻

Gov. Polis is slashing her prison sentence in half and releasing her on parole June 1.

They CLEARLY violated her rights, locking her… pic.twitter.com/IYj15FydhC

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) May 15, 2026

The Guardian reported more on Trump’s previous statements calling for Peters’ release:

“God Bless Tina Peters, who is now, for two years out of nine, sitting in a Colorado Maximum Security Prison, at the age of 73, and sick, for the “crime” of trying to stop the massive voter fraud that goes on in her State (where people are leaving in record numbers!),” he posted on Truth Social last year.

“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.”

Polis, a Democrat serving his second term as governor, had been tight-lipped about potential clemency for Peters for months. But on 3 March, he gave a strong signal he was leaning towards doing so. In a post on social media, he compared Peters’ case with that of former state senator Sonya Jaquez Lewis. Lewis was convicted of submitting forged letters to the legislature during an inquiry into whether she mistreated staff.

Both Lewis and Peters have overlapping felony counts of attempting to influence a public official, but Lewis was sentenced to probation and community service. Polis said: “Justice in Colorado and America needs to be applied evenly, you never know when you might need to depend on the rule of law. This is the context I am using as I consider cases like this that have sentencing disparities.”

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President Trump was unable to grant Peters clemency himself due to the president only having the power to grant clemency for federal offenses, and Peters was convicted on state charges.

Watch Tina Peters side of the story in an interview that she sat down for before she was sentenced to prison: