A Denver judge declined Monday night to rule immediately on a lawsuit seeking to force the hand-counting of ballots in more than half of Colorado’s counties as the fallout from an accidental leak of voting equipment passwords continued in the final 24 hours of the election.
District Court Judge Kandace Gerdes heard four hours of testimony in a hearing called in lawsuit filed by the Libertarian Party of Colorado. The leak had been reported separately last week by the state Republican Party and Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat.
A lawyer for the Libertarian Party argued that the leak, discovered by a prominent 2020 election denier, compromised the election’s integrity. The suit also seeks the destruction of affected election equipment.
Griswold, meanwhile, announced she would be hiring a “well-regarded” law firm to conduct an outside investigation into how the information was posted to her office’s website — in a hidden tab on a spreadsheet — for months before it was discovered.
In court Monday, attorneys representing Griswold argued that the passwords were not enough to jeopardize voting systems and that the Libertarians’ request would sow “chaos” across the state as clerks prepared for polls to close at 7 p.m. Tuesday. Griswold’s office has said that in order to use the passwords, a person would need physical access to the equipment, along with additional passwords that were not included in the released spreadsheet.
During the hearing, no evidence was presented indicating any voting systems were compromised or had been improperly accessed. First Deputy Attorney General LeeAnn Morrill said suggestions otherwise were based on “supposition” and “fear mongering.”
Last week, after the breach was revealed, Griswold immediately came under fire. Regardless of how Gerdes rules on the Libertarian suit, other election officials are bracing for additional litigation and fallout from the release of the passwords, which came just days before a presidential election that some elements of the Republican Party were already seeking to undermine.
Matt Crane, the executive director of the Colorado County Clerks Association, told The Denver Post that some Colorado Republican officials were already planning to challenge the certification of ballots in the state.
“The software leak is a valid leak for people to be concerned about,” Crane, a Republican who formerly served as the Arapahoe County clerk, said. “But I think it’s mitigated. … But bad actors will do what they do. We know that.”
Griswold calls leak “regrettable”
The release of the passwords was revealed Oct. 29, when the Colorado Republican Party announced that a spreadsheet posted on the secretary of state’s website included a hidden tab specifying the codes. The party also released a redacted version of an affidavit from an unnamed person who found the passwords in the spreadsheet.
The affidavit was filed by Shawn Smith, a retired Air Force officer who has previously sought to undermine the 2020 election results. The Post obtained a copy of the affidavit Monday, and it was later described by Smith during the court hearing.
Smith testified that he discovered the passwords while …read more
Source:: The Denver Post – Politics
