Colorado Exposes Passwords for Election Machines on Website
The passwords had been on the website since August.
The Colorado Secretary of State’s website posted a spreadsheet containing partial passwords to election machines.
The website has had the passwords on it since August. From The New York Times:
The passwords, which were exposed on a hidden tab in a spreadsheet online, were first revealed in a letter by Hope Scheppelman, the vice chair of the Colorado Republican Party. The passwords became visible when a user downloaded a voting systems inventory spreadsheet and clicked “unhide.”
According to an affidavit that accompanied Ms. Scheppelman’s letter, the passwords had been exposed since at least August.
But while the breach of password data is likely to erode confidence and invite disinformation in Colorado, there are multiple layers of security to protect the integrity of election machines in the state.
Election machines are not connected to the internet, and they are required to be kept in secure rooms that require ID badges for entry. They also have “24/7 video camera recording on all election equipment,” according to the secretary of state’s office.
Even if a person were to somehow gain access to a machine, the passwords revealed would not be sufficient.
Colorado’s Republican Party said the spreadsheet “contained BIOS [Basic Input/Output System] passwords for election systems in 63 of the 64 counties in Colorado.”
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold promised the exposure didn’t compromise anything:
Colorado elections include many layers of security. 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. Under Colorado law, voting equipment must be stored in secure rooms that require a secure ID badge to access. That ID badge creates an access log that tracks who enters a secure area and when. There is 24/7 video camera recording on all election equipment. Clerks are required to maintain restricted access to secure ballot areas, and may only share access information with background-checked individuals. No person may be present in a secure area unless they are authorized to do so or are supervised by an authorized and background-checked employee. There are also strict chain of custody requirements that track when a voting systems component has been accessed and by whom. It is a felony to access voting equipment without authorization.
In other words, people with access to the machines can access them with the passwords.
It’s naive to think that those people with access wouldn’t take advantage of the password exposure.
You don’t think they could find a way around those other security layers?
Because, you know, people with access to high-level places have never caused problems! That only happens in the movies, right?
Jeff Hunt of 9NEWS reminded Griswold that the office has made numerous mistakes that have dampened the citizens’ faith in the state’s election process:
HUNT: This is not the first time that your office has made mistakes that have damaged voters confidence in our elections. In 2022, your office sent out mailers to 30,000 non citizens, inviting them to register to vote. They, of course, are not eligible to register to vote. That same year, your office used Colorado’s ballot tracking system to send messages to specific Coloradans, encouraging them to vote, when in fact they had already voted, causing confusion that had to be cleaned up by the county clerks. And now this leak of the voting system passwords.
Given your office’s repeated errors that have damaged confidence in our elections, which you say is paramount, will you resign?
GRISWOLD: Absolutely not.
Our elections are a mess in Colorado. Kyle Clark asks Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold if she will resign. 👀 pic.twitter.com/311L24QHuD
— Jeff Hunt (@jeffhunt) October 30, 2024
Colorado Secretary of State posted a spreadsheet with voting system passwords. Watch the entire interview here: pic.twitter.com/mQOqLH6z01
— Jeff Hunt (@jeffhunt) October 30, 2024
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Comments
password was revealed as:
Tren de Aragua
Password has been changed to “Noanglais”
think about the honest mistakes and now multiply that with the “gaffes’ that the left gets away with in cheating
The machines can’t be trusted quite independent of the password exposure, because they’re programmed and the software that the programmers used to program could itself be compromised.
Griswold should step down (she is incompetent) and the DOJ and or FBI should investigate her. After the election, President Trump will do exactly that!
As many have pointed out on Twitter/X, it’s worth noting that this is the same woman who illegally tried to keep Trump off the ballot, a move that was so brazen in its illegality that the SCOTUS decision to restore Trump to the ballot was unanimous.
The name of the person who signed the affidavit was blacked out.
so again
the government tells the taxpayers
you have no power
we will not let you know who made this error as we pay them etc
same way we wont tell you the names of the “children” who commit crimes as we let them back into classrooms or the streets
GOVERNMENT OVER THE PEOPLE
never ever ever ends well for the people
What do you mean hiding the spreadsheet tab isn’t security?!?
/people who think they understand computers
My theory is computer hacking is a big vote fraud part of stealing since 2020.
This seems like a fire able offense even for an elected official.
Seems like they sentenced Tina Peters of Mesa County, CO for 8+ years for similar issues.
Put Allen Ludden in charge.
he’s currently too busy with betty
IMO the best way, long term to fix this level of incompetence by elections officials is to refuse to seat anyone for HoR and to refuse their electoral votes. They can hold do over elections for HoR in January. Sucks for Colorado in the short term. Longer term though the very clear message sent about shenanigans having consequences will absolutely be received. The voters in Colorado can then take out their anger on the State officials who led them to this consequence and find someone to fix their office of Secretary of State…or not and suffer the same fate.
That would take, amongst other things, a modicum of courage that cannot be found in DC.
Yep. Highly unlikely to occur but a guy can dream.
“Election machines are not connected to the internet,”
Maybe not at the moment, but the machines do have the CAPABILITY to be connected to the internet.
A capability that can be easily exploited by anyone with an IT background.
Which isn’t the only vulnerability….. If someone with physical access to the machines has access to the PWs (and since the PW were placed online they did) that’s a major vulnerability. Not everyone with physical access is given the PWs for a valid reason; security. The toothpaste is out of the tube on this error and absent dramatic steps there’s no way to fix it.
Every single machine in CO needs to be withdrawn and replaced or wiped with all previously entered early ballots tabulation discarded. The Colorado Sec State effed this up. The only other way to ensure no shenanigans is to go to an emergency in person election day vote. If not then refuse to seat the HoR ‘elected’ and refuse to accept the electors and the State of Colorado electoral vote.
And in that very corner of the Twilight Zone… imagine if you will, a rogue Democrat criminal in illegal possession of the keys to a county’s tabulation center, where all the “secure” ballot-counting equipment is housed.
This is the same gaslighting eyewash they always spew, like “nobody is trying to take your guns.”
After the last presidential election, the brouhaha in Maricopa County involved the elections weasels refusing to deliver to the auditors “access or control of ALL routers, tabulators or combinations thereof, used in connection with the administration of the 2020 election, and the public IP of the router.”
If you’re not in IT, go look up what a “router” does… and then ask yourself why ANY router attached to election machinery would have a “public IP.”
Answer: they’re lying to you.
I have lived in Colorado for well over half a century. During that time we have been mostly governed by Democrats, and the Republican Party here has been collaborationist at a level that would embarrass Phillipe Petain. No Democrat official will ever be punished for violating the law or good governmental practice if it helps the Party.
About the only question left is whether Harris [and all the lower level Democrat candidates on our ballot] get more votes than our census population?
Mind you, I will vote, as will my family. [We haven’t had time to take our ballots to the ballot box in the County Clerk’s office.] If only to be able to say we did it before the Time of Troubles.
Subotai Bahadur
Subotai Bahadur
Man it’s nice to know we have such competent people in charge of our elections..
Sheldon Cooper: That’s sarcasm, right?