Colorado secretary of state, who tried to remove Trump from the ballot, leaks passwords to voting systems online

Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold’s office has come under fire for posting a spreadsheet containing voting system passwords to its website. 

Colorado Republican Party Vice Chair Hope Scheppelman sent a mass email containing an affidavit from someone who claimed to have downloaded the Excel file from the website and discovered that the passwords were in a hidden tab on the website that could be revealed by clicking "unhide," 9News reported.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Griswold’s office said "The Department is working to remedy this situation where necessary." They added, "The Department took immediate action as soon as it was aware of this and informed the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which closely monitors and protects the county’s essential security infrastructure."

The passwords were BIOS passwords and are a part of the security process for voting machines in the state. The passwords are used to configure system settings. 

A spokesperson for the office said, "There are two unique passwords for every election equipment component, which are kept in separate places and held by different parties. Passwords can only be used with physical in-person access to a voting system."

Griswold told the outlet, "To be very clear, we do not see this as a full security threat to the state. This is not a security threat. There are two passwords to get into any voting component, along with physical access. We have layers of security, and out of just an abundance of caution, have staff in the field changing passwords, looking at access logs and looking at the entire situation and continuing our investigation."

She said that the spreadsheet had been up on the website for several months before it was discovered. 

Griswold did not inform county clerks about the passwords, saying, "We did not decide not to disclose something to county clerks. We were actively investigating along with federal partners. We want to try to take as measured of approaches to situations as possible and gather good information. So, along those lines, we are still in an active investigation."

Griswold sought to remove GOP candidate Donald Trump from the 2024 presidential ballot because he was "disqualified" from running under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which relates to insurrectionists. The Supreme Court in March unanimously ruled that Trump could not be taken off the ballot.