Bipartisan demands grow to investigate Colorado’s voting system password breach

Nov 2, 2024

Gov. Polis helped bail out Secretary of State Jena Griswold after a voting system security breach was finally revealed this week, but not before chastising his fellow Democrat and calling for an investigation.

Polis and Griswold insisted Friday the crisis has been averted because of Colorado’s gold standard system that has so many layers of protection against machine tampering — unless your name is Tina Peters.

But Polis and other Democrat and Republican leaders still want questions answered as to how hundreds of passwords came to be posted on Griswold’s official website for at least three months.

Attorney General Phil Weiser says a thorough review is critical, and Republicans are calling for an emergency meeting of the bipartisan Legislative Audit Committee.

Polis’s response to reporter Shaun Boyd:

“How could this happen? Sensitive passwords posted,” Polis told CBS Colorado in disbelief on Thursday.

“Was it nefarious? Who did this? Polis also posed questions. “I read in one article that the person was no longer there. What does that mean? Were they fired? Were they reprimanded? Was there a crime committed? I know none of this. We should find this out.”

 

The governor only found out about the leak after Griswold finally admitted to it, nearly a week after she was informed on Oct. 25.

“Anything related to elections, we want to be radically transparent,” Polis said. “So any time we know something, we will tell people.”

The national Republican Party would also like to know the answers to those questions.

The list of concerns and requested actions to secure the integrity of the election soon followed from Trump’s lawyer, almost all of which seem to have been ignored in the mop up of Griswold’s big ass gaffe.

To ensure no tampering had occurred in the three months the passwords were available online, Trump’s team asked that “Trusted Build” security measures including testing take place to secure the equipment.

All ballot processing should be halted during the security checks, and rescanned, Trump’s team asked.

Instead, the only action Griswold took was to change the passwords and “verify” no settings had been changed on election equipment as state workers watched to make sure there was no cheating.

And despite Polis’s insistence on rabid transparency, the counties affected by the password breach were not disclosed in his joint statement with Griswold to assure voters that all is now well.

The official state response to Republicans and Trump appears to be that if Trump isn’t satisfied with their effort, he can cough up a few million bucks for a recount after the election is already over.

Meanwhile, voters are still waiting for an answer as to why Griswold waited a week before informing county clerks across the state their passwords were posted online.

Any monkey business would have to be done in person at those election offices.

Griswold’s refusal to take swift action and inform clerks to be on the lookout is gross malfeasance of office.

Instead she held a controversial press conference the same day she mysteriously learned of the leak to instead announce Mesa County had caught nine bogus ballots from being counted.

Griswold got so carried away with her boasting to the cameras that she gave away all the details of the Mesa Clerk’s investigation thereby alerting the suspects that the authorities were on to them.

Now she becomes belligerent when asked to take responsibility for her own actions and that of the office to which she was elected.

Her response is to kick an employee under the bus, then back-up over them without the curtesy of a tap on the horn.

The public deserves to know how it happened, how Griswold learned of it, and why she waited a week to act just days before a critical election.

Voters have grown weary of Griswold always playing the victim and blaming her own constituents of becoming conspiracists every time there’s a major screw-up on her watch that tarnishes our so-called gold standard election system.

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