Jena Griswold: Mail Ballots are Secure

Jena Griswold: "We are in conversations with our lawyers to ensure we are defending Colorado’s elections. Look, mail-in ballots are secure. They can’t be hacked because they’re just a piece of paper. That’s increasingly important, since Trump has made our elections less secure since returning to office. He’s dismantled much of the federal government’s work on countering foreign disinformation and is clearly taking democracy lessons from a dictator—Putin."

Jena Griswold, Colorado’s Secretary of State, has faced several controversies related to election management and voter security. One of the most notable incidents occurred in 2024, when her office accidentally published partial passwords for components of the voting system in a publicly accessible spreadsheet. The breach affected 46 counties, and in 34 of them, the passwords were still active at the time of the incident. As a result, the Colorado Libertarian Party filed a lawsuit demanding that Griswold recuse herself from overseeing the elections and that votes be counted manually.

Additionally, in 2020, the conservative group Judicial Watch sued Griswold for allegedly failing to remove inactive voters from the rolls, which they claimed led to artificially high registration rates. Although Griswold denied the allegations, her office agreed to share public data annually for five years as part of the legal settlement.

Another point of criticism was her decision to hire external investigators with political ties to review the password breach. The resulting report confirmed that security protocols had been violated, but no disciplinary actions were taken. The investigation cost over $30,000, with no public disclosure of how the funds were spent.

These controversies have fueled ongoing debate about transparency and election security in Colorado, especially in a national climate marked by growing distrust in democratic processes.