The Colorado governor, Jared Polis, commuted the nearly nine-year prison sentence of a former Colorado clerk who allowed unauthorized people to access her county’s voting systems in a case that had been an intense focus of Donald Trump and other allies who sought to overturn the 2020 election.

Tina Peters, who is currently incarcerated, will be released on parole on 1 June after Polis reduced her sentence from eight and a half years in prison to about four and a half. “This is an extremely unusual and lengthy sentence for a first time offender who committed non-violent crimes,” Polis wrote in a clemency letter to Peters.

Peters, the former clerk in Mesa county in western Colorado, was found guilty of four felonies and three misdemeanors in 2024. In 2021, she allowed a former pro surfer named Conan Hayes to access the county’s voting equipment and copy it and attend a sensitive upgrade of the county’s voting software.

Polis’ decision “validates Trump’s basest impulses and emboldens this lawless president”, said Jena Griswold, Colorado’s top election official.

“He has learned now just how hard he needs to push and threaten the state of Colorado to get what he wants. Clemency also will embolden the election denial movement across the country and will leave a dark, dangerous imprint on American democracy for years to come,” she said. “You may hear suggestions that this clemency is simply bringing Tina Peters’ punishment in line with the scope of her crimes. What it actually is is special treatment. Instead of waiting for Peters to be resentenced in the courts as directed by the Court of Appeals, she will be released from incarceration in the coming weeks.”

Matt Crane, the executive director of the Colorado Clerks Association, said the group was “furious, disgusted, and deeply disappointed by the governor’s decision”.

“We’re starting to hear from election officials across the country that this signals that it’s open season on our elections and election officials,” he said.

Griswold said she had learned about Polis’ decision about 45 minutes before it was made public.

Hayes is affiliated with MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, one of the most prominent figures to spread misinformation about the 2020 election and try and overturn it. Sensitive passwords and other information from Mesa county’s voting equipment, made by Dominion, later was published online by rightwing personalities.

A judge sentenced Peters to eight and a half years in prison and six months in jail. “You are no hero,” judge Matthew Barrett said when he sentenced Peters in 2024. “You’re a charlatan who used, and is still using, your prior position in office to peddle a snake oil that’s been proven to be junk time and time again.”

But an appeals court overturned that sentence in April, and ordered a judge to reconsider it.

Trump, who continues to spread false information about Dominion and the 2020 election, has repeatedly called for Peters to be freed. He issued a federal pardon to Peters last year, but the effort was largely symbolic since Peters is in prison for state crimes. He also instructed the justice department to try and get Peters released from prison.

“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.”

But officials in Colorado said it was not accurate to compare the two cases. Election officials also warned that letting Peters off the hook would send the wrong message to those who tamper with elections.

“Beyond one count in common, it is not accurate to suggest that Peters’s and Sonya Jaquez Lewis’s actions or impacts are the same,” Jena Griswold, Colorado’s secretary of state, said in a statement at the time.

“Peters organized the breach of the election equipment, broke the public trust and attacked the very foundations of our democratic process,” Griswold, a Democrat, said in a statement. “Her actions are still being used to try to undermine the 2026 election. She should get no special treatment by the Governor, and his statement is shocking and worrisome.”

Dan Rubinstein, the district attorney whose office prosecuted Peters, noted that sentencing ranges allowed for two people convicted of the same charge to get different sentences.

“The same offense can be committed in very different ways and result in very different consequences,” he said in a statement. “While the governor has the legal authority to modify a sentence, doing so here would be a gross injustice to the affected citizens I represent,” he said earlier this month.