Colorado

Colorado: Investigation finds election equipment passwords were posted accidentally, but safeguards also lacking | Bente Birkeland/Colorado Public Radio

A law firm has concluded that the online posting of passwords for Colorado’s election machines happened inadvertently, but did violate some policies. The Secretary of State’s office hired the Denver-based firm Baird Quinn LLC to investigate after the security breach came to light this fall. In her 19-page report, attorney Beth Quinn wrote that the incident was preceded by a unique set of circumstances that would have been difficult to anticipate. According to the investigation, the employee who originally created the hidden tab of passwords had no expectation the spreadsheet, which also listed technical information about the state’s voting equipment, would ever be posted online. And she had left the office by the time other staff decided to put the document on the department website, in a bid to increase transparency. Read Article

Colorado’s election equipment password breach explained | Bente Birkeland and Kiara DeMare/Colorado Public Radio

The revelation that BIOS passwords for ballot tabulation machines in 32 of Colorado’s 64 counties were posted for months in a hidden tab on a spreadsheet on the Secretary of State’s website set off statewide shockwaves in the days before the November election. The Secretary of State’s office was originally notified by an election equipment vendor who had spotted the tab. The passwords were removed on Oct. 24, after being online since June. Shawn Smith, a retired Air Force Colonel and conservative activist, wrote in an affidavit that he discovered the hidden tab much earlier, on Aug. 8, and checked twice in October that it was still there, without informing the state. The public became aware through an email the Colorado Republican Party sent to its supporters on Oct. 29. Read Article

Colorado: Denver DA investigates Secretary of State election system password breach | Sam Tabachnik/The Denver Post

The Denver district attorney has launched an investigation into how a spreadsheet of voting system passwords ended up on the Colorado secretary of state’s website earlier this year. The DA’s office on Monday would not divulge additional details of the probe beyond confirming an open investigation. On Oct. 29, Secretary of State Jena Griswold announced that a spreadsheet posted publicly on her office’s website for several months “improperly included” a hidden tab that displayed passwords protecting Colorado voting machines in many counties. The office categorized the breach as accidental. Griswold is not the focus or target of the DA’s investigation, according to an email obtained by The Denver Post that was sent by Beth McCann, the district attorney, to the office. Read Article

Colorado voters reject sweeping elections overhaul backed by wealthy donors | Chase Woodruff/Colorado Newsline

Colorado voters on Tuesday rejected a sweeping plan to overhaul the state’s elections system hatched by some of the state’s wealthiest and most influential political donors. The measure proposed to abolish party primaries for most state and federal offices, replacing them with “all-candidate” primaries for each race, and established ranked choice voting for general elections. The Colorado measure was one of six on the ballot in 2024 bankrolled by the nonprofit Unite America, which backed a successful effort to establish such a system in Alaska in 2020. The group is co-chaired by Kent Thiry, former CEO of Denver-based dialysis services company DaVita, who previously sponsored successful efforts to open Colorado’s primaries and create independent redistricting commissions. Read Article

Colorado voting system passwords were posted to secretary of state’s website | Keely Quinlan/StateScoop

Passwords to certain components of Colorado’s voting system were posted publicly on the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office website under a hidden tab of a spreadsheet, according to a discovery made Tuesday. Discovery of the posted passwords was shared on Tuesday in a mass email from Colorado Republican Party Vice Chair Hope Scheppelman. The mass email, Denver’s 9NEWS reported, included an affidavit from a person, whose name was redacted, who claimed they’d downloaded the spreadsheet file from the website and discovered the hidden tab by simply clicking “unhide.” The passwords included in the hidden tab were used to configure voting machine system settings, 9NEWS reported, and make up one part of the security process for Colorado’s voting machines. Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold told 9NEWS on Tuesday that the spreadsheet containing the passwords had been on the office’s website for several months, and that she was only made aware of the error this week before taking it down. Read Article

Colorado: Scheme to cast votes on stolen mail ballots thwarted by election officials | Jesse Paul/Colorado Sun

Colorado election officials say they have thwarted an effort to fraudulently cast votes on batch of stolen mail ballots in Mesa County. The scheme was blocked through the state’s voter signature verification process, which checks the signatures on mail ballots against the signatures the state has on file for each voter. If the signatures don’t match, election officials reach out to the voter to offer them an opportunity to remedy the situation through a process known as “curing.” When election officials recently reached out to a group of voters to help them cure the signature problems with their ballots, the voters informed the Mesa County Clerk and Recorder’s Office that they hadn’t voted. That triggered an investigation and led to the discovery of a dozen stolen and fraudulently cast ballots. Read Article

Colorado voting machines not connected to the internet | Sara Wilson/Colorado Newsline

Most counties in Colorado have upgraded their voting systems equipment since 2020 to models that physically cannot connect to the internet, and those that rely on older machines are statutorily required to disable any wireless capability. Election officials say that even the older models do not create a vulnerability in the voting system, as some conservative politicians and activists claim. “This is a known thing amongst the counties and amongst the Secretary of State’s office — that the (wireless) card was physically present, and so that there’s a couple of steps that were taken to ensure that it wasn’t activated or present,” Boulder Clerk and Recorder Molly Fitzpatrick, a Democrat, said. Read Article

Colorado judge who sentenced Tina Peters to prison receives threats | Amy Beth Hanson/Associated Press

A rural Colorado county courthouse beefed up security Friday after threats were made against staff and a judge who sentenced former county clerk Tina Peters to nearly nine years behind bars and admonished her for her role in a data breach scheme catalyzed by the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump. Courthouse staff in Grand Junction, Colorado, received multiple threats that were being vetted by law enforcement while extra security was provided, said spokesperson Wendy Likes with the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office. She did not say how many threats were made or how they were received. She also declined to describe the extra security. Read Article

Former Colorado county clerk Tina Peters sentenced to 9 years for voting data scheme | Mead Gruver/Associated Press

A judge ripped into a Colorado county clerk for her crimes and lies before sentencing her Thursday to nine years behind bars for a data-breach scheme spawned from the rampant false claims about voting machine fraud in the 2020 presidential race. District Judge Matthew Barrett told former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters — after earlier sparring with her for continuing to press discredited claims about rigged voting machines — that she never took her job seriously. “I am convinced you would do it all over again if you could. You’re as defiant as any defendant this court has ever seen,” Barrett told her in handing down the sentence. “You are no hero. You abused your position and you’re a charlatan.” Read Article

Colorado: On Native land, a new push to expand voting meets the long tail of state violence | Alex Burness/Bolts

Lorelei Cloud was born in 1967, three years before Native Americans living on tribal lands in Colorado were guaranteed the right to vote. Even once she turned 18, and for many years thereafter, she did not vote. Her polling place was in Durango, miles from the Southern Ute Indian Tribe Reservation, where she lived, and she had no car with which to access registration services or to cast a ballot. Politicians seldom visited her area, and hardly seemed to represent her interests, anyway. Cloud is now vice chair of the Southern Ute tribal council, and from the tribe’s headquarters early this summer, she reflected on how much has changed. Since 2019, when Democrats gained a legislative trifecta in the state, Colorado has established a polling place on the reservation and placed a drop box there for mail ballots. The state has also hired special liaisons to promote and facilitate turnout among Native voters. “I don’t want future generations to have to deal with any of what we’ve had to, to get to vote,” Cloud told me. “We should have access to the vote, to shape our own region, our own country.” Read Article

Colorado: Former Pro-Trump County Clerk Is Found Guilty of Tampering With Voting Machines | Alan Feuer and Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

Tina Peters, the former clerk of Mesa County, was convicted on Monday of tampering with voting machines under her control in a failed attempt to prove that they had been used to rig the 2020 election against former President Donald J. Trump. After nearly five hours of deliberations, a jury in Grand Junction found Ms. Peters guilty of seven criminal charges connected to her efforts to breach a machine manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems. The jury determined that Ms. Peters had helped an outsider gain unauthorized access to the machine in May 2021 and obtain information that was later made public at a conspiratorial event held to undermine trust in Trump’s defeat to Biden. Ms. Peters is set to be sentenced on Oct. 3 and could face multiple years in prison. Read Article

Colorado judge denies acquittal to Tina Peters in charges related to voting machine data leak | Amanda Pampuro/Courthouse News Service

A Colorado judge on Thursday denied a motion for judgment of acquittal filed by Tina Peters, the former Mesa County clerk and recorder facing criminal charges related to a 2021 voting machine data leak. “Considering all of the forgoing evidence and in light of the charges that have been filed, the court does conclude the people have established sufficient evidence in both quantity and quality that proves her guilt beyond the reason of doubt,” 21st Judicial District Judge Matthew Barrett, an appointee of Democratic Governor Jared Polis, said from the bench. Following seven days of witness testimony from state and Mesa County elections administrators, as well as an employee of Dominion Voting Systems, and a man who’s identity was misused in the leak, prosecutors rested their case Thursday. Read Article

Colorado elections manager in voting machine tampering trial felt ‘sick’ seeing passwords online | Amanda Pampuro/Courthouse News

Before a jury on Thursday, Colorado’s voting systems manager recalled feeling sick when he first saw Mesa County’s voting machine passwords posted online in August 2021. Prosecutors called Jessi Romero, voting systems manager for the Colorado secretary of state, as a witness in their case against Tina Peters, Mesa County’s former clerk and recorder now on trial for charges related to helping leak voting machine data in 2021. Prosecutors say that in May 2021, Peters instructed her deputy clerk to turn off security cameras and arranged for an associate to observe and photograph the voting machine trusted build, an update process conducted in person since the machines can’t connect to the Internet. Peters then reportedly sent data and passwords to a Florida-based company for analysis and allowed them to be posted on the social media site Telegram by Ron Watkins, a key player in the QAnon conspiracy movement. Read Article

Colorado official faces trial following ‘Big Lie’ election conspiracies | Amanda Pampuro/Courthouse News Service

A faithful Republican living on Colorado’s conservative western slope, Tina Peters watched the 2020 presidential results with concern. Still, as the duly elected clerk and recorder for Mesa County, Peters was confident in the integrity of the election she had overseen. After all, nearly two-thirds of local voters backed then-President Donald Trump that November, also helping to lift Lauren Boebert into Congress. Fast forward five months later, to April 2021, and Grand Junction voters overwhelmingly rejected the most conservative city council candidates. Belief in the “Big Lie” about a stolen 2020 election had become a litmus test for Republican Party loyalty — and Peters began to question whether she could really trust the Dominion voting machines in her county. She voiced her concerns to Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, but they went ignored. Read Article

Colorado: Federal judge rejects voter intimidation lawsuit midway through trial | Seth Klamann/The Denver Post

A federal judge in Denver ruled against the plaintiffs in a voter intimidation lawsuit Thursday, ending a trial early after finding the organizations behind the suit hadn’t presented sufficient evidence against a group of Donald Trump supporters. U.S. District Judge Charlotte N. Sweeney issued her ruling Thursday morning. The trial had started Monday, more than two years after the lawsuit was filed by a trio of voting and civil rights organizations, including the local chapters of the NAACP and the League of Women Voters, against the U.S. Election Integrity Plan. That group, made up of supporters of the Republican former president and tied to prominent and discredited election conspiracy theorists, had been accused of questioning residents of high-density areas and places where ethnic and racial minorities live about their votes. Read Article

Colorado Lawmakers Send Bills on AI, Deepfakes to Governor | Government Technology

During a busy legislative session, Colorado lawmakers are addressing various technological issues, including deepfakes, facial recognition, and consumer protection from AI. Senate Bill 24-205, which has cleared the legislature, regulates “high-risk AI systems” impacting critical infrastructure, mandating risk management policies and impact assessments to prevent discrimination. House Bill 24-1147, targeting deepfakes in political communications, criminalizes deceptive portrayals of presidential candidates and imposes civil penalties for misusing deepfake technology. Read Article

Colorado Lawmakers Pass First-in-Nation Mandate for Voting Centers in Jails | Alex Burness/Bolts

Scott Deno, overseeing Colorado’s largest jail in Colorado Springs, emphasizes facilitating voting for incarcerated individuals, yet a recent admission reveals zero votes cast in the last election among the jail’s population. This issue extends statewide, with only 231 jail votes in Colorado during the 2022 general election, despite a daily jail population of 6,000, disproportionately Black and Latinx. The passage of Senate Bill 72, awaiting Governor Jared Polis’s signature, aims to rectify this, mandating polling stations in local jails during general elections and establishing ballot drop-off locations, making Colorado the first state with such a requirement. Read Article

Colorado officials warn of new frontier in election denial as more Republicans refuse to certify vote totals | Nick Coltrainb/The Denver Post

Colorado election officials from both major parties say a typically innocuous step in the certification of vote totals has increasingly been seized upon by activists to cast doubt over state elections. Since 2020, a small but growing number of county canvass boards have had Republican members refuse to sign off on vote tallies, according to state records. Those objections haven’t jeopardized the actual certification of elections, and Colorado’s system has additional processes in place to stop rogue canvass boards from preventing the finalizing of results. But it serves as an ill omen of potential efforts to sow distrust in voting heading into this year’s primary and general elections, several state and county election officials said in interviews with The Denver Post. Read Article

Colorado Secretary of State launches election security grant program amid 2024 threats | Chase Woodruff/Colorado Newsline

Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold launched a grant program aimed at enhancing election security, enabling local clerks in the state’s 64 counties to apply for reimbursement for security expenses such as locks, surveillance cameras, and cybersecurity infrastructure. Accessibility upgrades like additional handicap parking or language assistance at voter service centers are also eligible for funding. The $3.5 million grant, sourced from federal funds provided under the Help America Vote Act, seeks to safeguard Colorado’s reputation as a leading state in elections administration amidst evolving threats. Griswold emphasized the importance of innovation and adaptation to counter dangers and threats facing elections, especially in the wake of the unprecedented efforts to undermine the 2020 election results. Read Article

Colorado secretary of state urges Supreme Court to keep Trump off the ballot | Lawrence Hurley/NBC

Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold has urged the Supreme Court to affirm that the state can legally prevent former President Donald Trump from being on the Republican primary ballot due to his actions leading up to the January 6 Capitol attack. The case revolves around whether Trump “engaged in insurrection” under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which would disqualify him from serving as president. Griswold defended Colorado’s process for determining candidate eligibility and argued that the state should not be forced to include a candidate found to have violated his oath by engaging in insurrection. Read Article

Colorado: Sweeping overhaul of elections gets initial nod for ballot from state Title Board | Chase Woodruff/Colorado Newsline

The “Colorado Equal Election Access Amendment,” backed by Colorado multimillionaire Kent Thiry, has gained initial approval from the state’s Initiative Title Setting Review Board. The proposed constitutional amendment aims to revamp primary and general elections, eliminating party primaries and introducing “all-candidate primary elections.” Candidates would petition onto the primary ballot through signature campaigns, and the top four candidates would advance to the general election, determined by ranked-choice voting. Thiry’s proposal also seeks to eliminate the vacancy committee system, where parties fill vacant seats, and is part of his broader efforts to reform Colorado’s election laws. The amendment needs 55% voter approval to be included in the state constitution. Read Article

Colorado GOP’s appeal to U.S. Supreme Court likely guarantees Trump will be on state’s presidential primary ballot | Jesse Paul and Brian Eason/The Colorado Sun

The Colorado Republican Party has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the state Supreme Court’s decision blocking Donald Trump from appearing on the Republican presidential primary ballot due to a violation of the “insurrection clause” in the Constitution. The Colorado court ruled that Trump’s engagement in the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection disqualified him from running. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision may impact Trump’s candidacy nationwide, as the case challenges the application of the 14th Amendment’s insurrection clause to presidential candidates. Read Article

Colorado Supreme Court justices face a flood of threats after disqualifying Trump from the ballot | Ryan J. Reilly/NBC

In the 24 hours following the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to remove former President Donald Trump from the state’s Republican primary ballot, social media platforms have experienced an influx of threats against the justices involved in the case. A report by nonpartisan organization Advance Democracy reveals a notable increase in violent rhetoric directed at the justices and Democrats, often linked to Trump’s posts on his Truth Social platform. Some users even shared personal information of the justices, including email addresses, phone numbers, and office addresses. The threats, including calls for violence and harm, align with a pattern observed after legal actions against Trump, raising concerns about the normalization of such violent rhetoric and the role of social media platforms in its dissemination. Read Article

Colorado county clerks call on officials to defend election system against ‘dishonest actors’ | Marianne Goodland/Colorado Politics

The Colorado County Clerks Association is taking a stand against what they label as “dishonest actors, grifters, and bullies” who they claim undermine voter confidence in the state’s election system. The association’s executive board, dominated by Republicans, sent a letter to all election officials in the state, urging them to participate in a coordinated effort to counter misinformation and regain trust in elections. The letter addresses claims of vulnerabilities in the 2023 election and questions the credibility of such assertions, pointing to the defeat of Proposition HH, endorsed by Democrats. The clerks criticize Republicans in certain counties who initially refused to certify election results, citing concerns about voting equipment and voter rolls. Read Article

Colorado: In new lawsuit, Tina Peters sues local, state and federal officials to stop criminal investigations into her conduct | Bente Birkeland/Colorado Public Radio

Former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters has filed a federal lawsuit, seeking to prohibit the government from pursuing criminal proceedings against her. The suit contends that investigations into her conduct as clerk are unlawful and retaliatory for her exercise of free speech, freedom of association, and the right to petition the government. The primary focus of the complaint is Peters’ alleged involvement in an illegal scheme to copy the hard drives of her county’s voting equipment after the 2020 election, purportedly to aid in the search for voter fraud. Peters, who is facing ten state charges, argues that her actions were within her legal obligations to preserve election records. Prosecutors claim she assisted in identity theft and violated state rules during a voting system software update. Read Article

Colorado: More than a third of state’s election officials have left office since 2020 — sparking concerns ahead of 2024 | Seth Klamann/Denver Post

Over the past three years, more than a third of Colorado’s local election officials have left their positions, driven by factors like term limits and harassment-related fatigue. This high turnover rate raises concerns as the state approaches the 2024 presidential election, with nearly half of Coloradans now living in a county with a new election clerk. Threats and harassment directed at election workers since the 2020 election have been cited as significant factors in these departures, with the state losing 24 top election officials in this period, impacting 38% of its counties. The bipartisan reform group Issue One is advocating for increased federal funding and protections to address this issue and strengthen the democratic process. Read Article

Colorado: Georgia indictment shows that alleged crimes in Coffee County were ‘template’ for Mesa County | Quentin Young/Colorado Newsline

The recent indictment of former President Donald Trump and others in Georgia, which alleges a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election, has ties to Colorado. Colorado’s connection to this alleged conspiracy is revealed through several aspects of the indictment. Specifically, the indictment mentions security breaches involving Dominion Voting Systems equipment, similar to what occurred in Colorado’s Mesa County. Some of the same figures and actors are also involved in both cases. The Georgia indictment highlights a larger conspiracy involving multiple states, underscoring the ongoing threat to democracy as the country approaches the 2024 presidential election. Read Article

Colorado counties awarded nearly $1M to boost election security | Hannah Metzger/Colorado Politics

The Colorado Secretary of State’s Office has awarded more than $945,000 in grants to 56 counties in the state to enhance the physical security of their election offices. The grants were established in response to alleged election security breaches in Mesa and Elbert counties. These grants, ranging from $2,669 to $36,500, were used to fulfill new security requirements, such as implementing key card access systems and 24/7 video surveillance for rooms housing election equipment. The grants were created through the Colorado Election Security Act, which aims to safeguard the state’s election systems from insider threats and unauthorized access to voting equipment. Read Article

Colorado election bill would bring county clerks financial relief, but wouldn’t change the rules for recounts | Bente Birkeland/Colorado Public Radio

For the first time in more than a decade, Colorado counties could get more money from the state to help cover the cost of elections. Election officials from both political parties requested the change and say it’s especially important to help counties meet new demands. Democratic Boulder County Clerk Molly Fitzpatrick said election administrators have continued to make improvements to the election system, despite huge challenges, like running the 2020 general election in the middle of a pandemic. “And since then, facing massive amounts of mis- and disinformation and threats to our staff and to clerks themselves,” said Fitzpatrick. “If the last few years have proven anything, it’s that we have continued to do more with less and it’s not sustainable.” Senate Bill 276 would nearly double the funding counties receive from the state. Colorado currently chips in $0.80 for each active voter in large counties. Smaller counties get $0.90. Clerks say that covers only about a fifth of what it actually costs to run their elections. Under this new measure, the state would pick up closer to half or 45 percent of the total cost.

Full Article: Colorado election bill would bring county clerks financial relief, but wouldn’t change the rules for recounts | Colorado Public Radio

Former Colorado County ClerkTina Peters Is Sentenced in Obstruction Case | Neil Vigdor/The New York Times

Tina Peters, a Trump loyalist who was barred from overseeing elections in a Colorado county after her indictment on charges related to tampering with voting equipment, was sentenced on Monday to home detention after she was convicted in a separate obstruction case. Ms. Peters, the former clerk in Mesa County, was given four months of house arrest and 120 hours of community service in connection with her February 2022 arrest in Grand Junction, Colo., on a misdemeanor obstruction charge, according to court records. A jury convicted Ms. Peters last month of stonewalling investigators from the district attorney’s office in Mesa County when they tried to seize an iPad from her that she had used to record a court proceeding. According to an affidavit, police officers responded to a local bagel shop where they said that Ms. Peters, a Republican, resisted while she was being searched and was taken into custody.

Full Article: Tina Peters, Former Colorado County Clerk, Is Sentenced in Obstruction Case – The New York Times