El Paso County Clerk and Recorder Steve Schleiker said Thursday on a Colorado Springs radio show that he will demand the resignation of Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold after the top elections official acknowledged the leak of online voting computer passwords earlier this week.
“Right now (what) I’m looking (at) as a clerk and a reporter is the level of competence, the lack of leadership in the secretary of state, and I’m here and I’m prepared to ask for his resignation as El Paso County. clerk and reporter,” Schleiker said while appearing on KVOR’s Richard Randall show Thursday morning.
A few hours later, Schleiker told The Gazette he was waiting to clarify his position until a statement his office plans to issue in the next couple of days.
The security breach was made public Tuesday by the Colorado Republican Party in a filing posted on the Secretary of State’s Office website. Griswold said someone in her office posted a spreadsheet online that “inappropriately” included voting machine passwords.
“We have no reason to believe there are any security breaches or compromises in the state of Colorado,” Griswold said in an interview with Gazette news partner 9News on Tuesday.
According to 9News, the passwords were visible for months in a hidden tab of a spreadsheet posted on the Secretary of State’s Office website that lists voting machines used by county officials by serial number, county, model and vendor .
When open, the tab showed one of two passwords required to make changes on each computer.
A spokesman for the Secretary of State’s Office said that knowing the passwords was not enough to pose an “immediate security threat” to the election and that the election had “many layers of security”. The spokesman said the two passwords needed to access a voting computer are kept separate and the machines must be accessed in person in a secure room.
In an email Thursday, the Secretary of State’s Office announced it will change election rules to allow a background-checked employee with cybersecurity experience to change passwords in an emergency. The designated employee can also “investigate the voting system,” according to the new rule.
Along with Colorado Department of State employees and in coordination with county officials, designated employees will enter badge-only areas in pairs to update passwords for county election equipment, according to a joint press release from Polis offices and Griswold. These will be observed directly by election officials from the local county clerk.
Schleiker confirmed that an employee of the secretary of state, as well as two employees of the local clerk’s office, changed the passwords on voting machines in El Paso County at the clerk’s office and the teller Thursday afternoon. He said the trial was being overseen by a bipartisan panel of two Republican and two Democratic election judges.
The governor’s and secretary of state’s offices said the goal is to update all passwords by Thursday evening, as well as verify the security of all voting components.
Schleiker said he is not concerned about a security breach in his county. He said the affected components required more than one password to make changes and that the voting machine room was protected with alarms and on-site security.
In 2023, the El Paso County Clerk and Recorder replaced its voting machines with ones that were not Wi-Fi enabled and could only be physically accessed, he said.
“We’ve never had any concerns here in El Paso County,” Schleiker said.
Although the leaked passwords were visible online for months, Griswold’s office only began changing them after the Colorado Republican Party made its discovery of the passwords public on Tuesday, 9News reported.
Several Colorado Republican leaders have since called for Griswold’s resignation. GOP Chairman Dave Williams called an emergency legislative hearing Wednesday to investigate the incident. Calling the breach and Griswold’s response a “snitch,” he announced Tuesday that he is raising money to sue the secretary of state.
Colorado Republicans urge Griswold to resign after election equipment passwords posted online
Schleiker said on the radio show that he has received calls from constituents about the leak.
“The clerk and the reporters are in the trenches and we are the ones answering the questions of our constituents and citizens, not the secretary of state’s office,” he said on the show.
He said on the show that he and other officials and reporters around the country had a meeting with the assistant secretary of state, but had not heard from Griswold in person until Thursday morning.
“I wasn’t very happy about the security breach,” he said.