DENVER — The Denver District Attorney's Office said on Monday that it is investigating after a spreadsheet posted to the secretary of state's website contained a hidden tab with voting system passwords.
A news release from the 4th Judicial District Attorney's Office in El Paso County said it has been in contact with Denver's district attorney, who is investigating the issue. The release says they will review the Denver DA's investigation and decide whether to investigate further.
Colorado's Democratic secretary of state, Jena Griswold, found out Oct. 24 that her office had inadvertently posted a spreadsheet to its website with a hidden tab that included voting system passwords.
Earlier that day, the Colorado Republican Party sent out a mass email with a redacted signed affidavit from someone saying they had downloaded a spreadsheet from the Secretary of State’s Office and discovered voting machine passwords on a hidden tab.
Those passwords were visible online for months. Griswold's office only started changing the passwords after the leak became public.
Voting machines used by county clerks are listed on a spreadsheet on the Colorado Secretary of State's website. The machines are listed by serial number, county, model and vendor. The leaked passwords are one of two needed to make changes to voting machines. Any changes require in-person access to the machines. In-person access is monitored 24/7 by video surveillance and tracked by badge ID logs.
A statement from the Secretary of State's Office says, "The Department of State is supporting and working closely with the Denver District Attorney’s investigation into the staff’s posting of a file that included voting system component passwords. We welcome the additional transparency that this investigation will provide to the public."
On Nov. 1, the Colorado Libertarian Party sued Griswold and her chief deputy, asking the court to decommission voting equipment and order a hand count of ballots in the 34 counties that had voting machine passwords visible online.
A Denver judge ruled Nov. 5 that no ballots would need to be counted by hand. At the trial, the deputy secretary of state testified that all passwords were changed and there was no evidence anyone accessed the machines. The judge wrote that the Secretary of State's Office independently acted to correct the password issue even before a lawsuit was filed.