Call for Hand Counts After Colorado’s Election Password Leak: Over Half of Counties Compromised

The recent password leak affecting 34 of Colorado’s 64 counties highlights serious vulnerabilities in the state’s election security under Secretary of State Jena Griswold’s oversight.

SECURE COLORADO ELECTIONS! A password change DOES NOT remedy the egregious election security breach by Secretary of State Jena Griswold’s office.

Releasing partial voting machine passwords—even unintentionally—compromises the public’s trust in a transparent and secure election process. While officials assert that multiple passwords and physical access are necessary to manipulate voting equipment, cybersecurity experts argue that any password exposure, however partial, poses inherent risks.

Although Griswold claimed that “multiple passwords and restricted access” were sufficient to protect Colorado’s voting systems, expert testimony warns that unauthorized access is entirely possible once passwords are exposed. We must assume backdoors have been installed for later access, regardless of password changes.  

Retired Pentagon and Military cybersecurity experts have testified that even partial access codes could enable bad actors to exploit vulnerabilities in the voting machines if they had physical or remote access​ completely undetected.

The Governor, Secretary of State, and Judge who heard this case are unwilling to set the voting machines aside or require a hand count election.  

Call on the state legislature and executive officials to order an emergency resolution requiring a full side-by-side hand count, not the state's limited ‘risk-limiting audit’ procedure, to secure our elections and provide transparency to Colorado voters now!