Colorado Agency ‘Improperly’ Posted Passwords for Its Election System Online

The Colorado Department of State—the bureau liable for securing voting systems up of a statesmanlike predetermination that’s already haunted by accusations of malfeasance and interference—says that it’s done a spot of an uh-oh.

For months, the bureau “improperly” hosted a publically disposable spreadsheet connected its website that included a hidden tab with partial passwords for its voting machines.

While the incidental is embarrassing and already fueling accusations from the state’s Republican party, the section said successful a statement that it “does not airs an contiguous information menace to Colorado’s elections, nor volition it interaction however ballots are counted.”

Colorado NBC affiliate presumption 9NEWS reported that Hope Scheppelman, vice seat of the state’s Republican party, revealed the mistake successful a wide email sent Tuesday morning, which included an affidavit from a idiosyncratic who claimed to person downloaded the spreadsheet and discovered the passwords by clicking a fastener to uncover hidden tabs.

In its statement, the Department of State said that determination are 2 unsocial passwords for each of its voting machines, which are stored successful abstracted places. Additionally, the passwords tin lone beryllium utilized by a idiosyncratic who is physically operating the strategy and voting machines are stored successful unafraid areas that necessitate ID badges to entree and are nether 24/7 video surveillance.

“The Department took contiguous enactment arsenic soon arsenic it was alert of this, and informed the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which intimately monitors and protects the [country’s] indispensable information infrastructure,” The section said, adding that it is “working to remedy this concern wherever necessary.”

Colorado voters usage insubstantial ballots, ensuring that a carnal insubstantial way that tin beryllium utilized to verify results tabulated electronically.

Despite the Department of State’s reassurances that its voting systems stay unafraid and reliable up of the election, the Colorado Republican Party rapidly seized connected the incidental to sew uncertainty astir “the galore problems with Colorado’s predetermination system.”

In a post from its authoritative X account, the Colorado Republican enactment accused Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold of “leaking predetermination passwords that compromised our CO elections with little than a week to go” and asked supporters to assistance rise $100,000 truthful that the enactment could writer Griswold.

The accusations travel weeks aft a Colorado justice sentenced erstwhile Mesa County clerk Tina Peters to 9 years successful situation for utilizing a stolen ID paper to illegally get elector information, which she shared with Republicans who falsely claimed that Donald Trump won the 2020 election.