October 30, 2024 12:03 PM UTC

Jena Griswold Has a Big (2026) Election Problem

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• by: Colorado Pols

One week before Election Day, Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold started fielding the wrong kind of calls. By the end of the evening on Tuesday, one election cycle — but not this one — had changed significantly.

It has long been an open secret that the ambitious Griswold — who tested the waters for a U.S. Senate bid in 2019 — has higher political aspirations. For at least a year now, Griswold has been positioning herself for a gubernatorial run in 2026. It may be that her constant focus on her future allowed her to lose track of the present, which is where a big mistake happened. Griswold’s response to this problem constitute both a narrative failure and a confidence failure in her leadership.

First, here’s the story on the current problem from the SOS office. As Marshall Zelinger reports for 9News:

The Colorado Secretary of State’s Office inadvertently posted a spreadsheet to its website with a hidden tab that included voting system passwords.

In a statement to 9NEWS, a spokesperson for the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office said that “the Department is working to remedy this situation where necessary.”

“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 spokesperson said.

News of the problem first came from a mass email sent by the Colorado Republican Party. While the State GOP certainly has a motive to push questions about the legitimacy of the election on behalf of Overlord Trump, it does not appear that this mistake — egregious as it may be — puts the 2024 election in any sort of danger in Colorado or elsewhere. Voting systems can only be accessed via secure rooms by someone with badge access under 24/7 surveillance, and the passwords that were apparently available online for several months are just one of two that are needed in order to access election machines.

Back to 9News:

Matt Crane, a former Republican Arapahoe County Clerk and current executive director of the Colorado Clerks Association, said the fact that the passwords were online, albeit hidden, is concerning, but that the group is satisfied with the actions the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office is taking.

“The truth is, is this a concern? Yes,” Crane said. “Is it being mitigated? Yes. Does this mean that all of the computers are connected to the internet and that votes are being flipped? No.”

Crane said that because every voter votes on a paper ballot – yes, mail-in ballots are still paper ballots – any discrepancies can be audited and remedied.

“I want to stress here, this isn’t our Republicans, but you will have some Republicans who will use this for political and financial purposes. Whereas we as clerks, we will stay in the truth in honoring our oath of office to serve our constituents in a truthful and honest manner,” Crane said.

Again, it does not appear that there is any cause for concern that the 2024 election could be open to shenanigans because of this password leak. Among other reactions, Griswold told 9News that her office immediately dispatched staffers into the field to assess election systems and change any passwords where necessary. In addition, there is a risk-limiting audit that takes place after every election in which a select number of ballots are pulled for a specific race in each county and compared to the machine count. As Zelinger notes for 9News, “Colorado started doing risk-limiting audits in 2017, and in every case, it has verified the machine count to the paper ballots.”

Unfortunately for Griswold, this is not the end of the story. In discussing the issue with Kyle Clark of 9News, something else happened: Griswold’s hopes at becoming Colorado’s next Governor went up in smoke. In a 15-minute interview, Griswold was evasive and unnecessarily defensive. For someone who is experienced with media interviews and has jumped at any chance to be on television in recent years, Griswold appeared to be caught off guard by some pretty obvious questions.

Let’s break down how this went so wrong for Griswold, starting with Clark’s question about how long certain passwords were available to the public online:

CLARK: Is it accurate that the passwords were removed from the public portion of your website last Thursday?

GRISWOLD: Yes.

CLARK: How long were they up?

GRISWOLD: [Takes deep breath] They were up for several months without it being realized. As soon as my office’s civil servants became aware that they were up, we started to take action.

Of course, it was the Colorado Republican Party who made the public (and the media) aware of this issue, which leads to Clark’s next question and begins the full unraveling for Griswold. Not only did Griswold not inform the county clerks of the issue…it’s not clear that she was even planning to tell them.

CLARK: Is it accurate that you did not notify the county clerks of  this breach, and they found out when the Colorado Republican Party announced it today?

GRISWOLD: What is accurate is that we had began an investigation and were working with the appropriate federal partners.

Griswold did not answer that question, so Clark tries again:

CLARK: Had you announced it to the county clerks?

GRISWOLD: No, we had not. We were doing an investigation and [were] in the field today, actually, before it was announced by the Republican Party.

Clark continues asking simple and relevant questions. Griswold continues responding in a curious manner:

CLARK: You held a press conference last Thursday to discuss an unrelated voter fraud scheme in Mesa County. Were you aware at that time that your office had leaked the passwords?

GRISWOLD: Well, to be very clear, when you say, ‘Passwords,’ there are two sets of passwords held by two separate parties in different locations to access voting equipment. So we do not think that this poses an immediate security threat to Colorado’s elections.

And at the time of the press conference we were not aware…[pause]…I was not aware. [Pols emphasis]

The conversation eventually returns back to whether or not Griswold was planning to inform Colorado county clerks about the password leak. Her final answer is not inspiring:

GRISWOLD: We did not decide not to disclose something to county clerks.

Gah!

We probably weren’t not going to not disclose this problem!

Clark later asks Griswold about how an investigation into this leak is going to progress. Griswold dodges a direct answer, leading to this exchange:

CLARK: So, I just want to make sure that I have a clear answer to that question. It sounds like what you’re saying is that the only people investigating the actions of your office are your office…

GRISWOLD: Well, what happened in my office is very straightforward. We unfortunately had a civil servant upload a spreadsheet with some passwords to voting equipment…

Oy.

Griswold certainly seems to indicate that she hasn’t even contemplated an outside investigation into how this problem might have occurred.

Finally, here are the whoppers:

CLARK: This is not the first time that your office has made mistakes that have damaged voters’ confidence in our elections…

Clark goes through a list of errors dating to the 2022 election before finishing with this:

CLARK: Given your office’s repeated errors that have damaged confidence in our elections, which you say is paramount, will you resign?

GRISWOLD: Absolutely not, Kyle, and I just want to…you’re unfairly characterizing and leaving out some, um, crucial information…

The rest of Griswold’s answer is pretty bad, but it gets worse on the follow-up:

CLARK: Given the number of fundamental errors that your office has made that have undermined voter confidence in elections, why do you think they keep happening?

GRISWOLD: [Takes a deep breath and pauses for several seconds] Why do errors happen? Kyle, there are, unfortunately, situations that arise every election that we are fixing as quickly as possible in the counties, and once in awhile, in my office, too.

Yikes.

We’re not going to go down a MAGA road of conspiracy nonsense here, because that’s not what happened and the 2024 election appears to be secure. But more than one thing can be true at the same time. In this case, the Secretary of State’s office made a big mistake and SOS Jena Griswold made everything look a lot worse in the subsequent interview trying to explain it away. She made it clear that her office was not planning to inform county clerks about the mistake, and even dodged a later question about whether she had planned to reveal the error to the public. The fact that the Colorado Republican Party put this out into the world before Griswold’s office could take accountability is a terrible look for all involved.

If this leak turns out to be a bigger mistake than it appears at the moment, then this story will obviously get much worse for Griswold. But in terms of her future as a candidate for Governor in 2026, the damage has already been done. Regaining the confidence of voters as soon as June 2026 may not be possible for Griswold.