DENVER — The Denver district attorney said Friday she will not file criminal charges in connection with passwords that "were published in error" on the Colorado Secretary of State website earlier this year.
Denver District Attorney Beth McCann said the decision is the result of a seven-week investigation. The possible violations included two Colorado statutes: C.R.S. 1-13-708(2), which concerns the publication of passwords related to a voting system, and C.R.S. 18-8-405(1), which concerns second degree official misconduct, the district attorney's office said in an afternoon press release.
On Oct. 29, the Colorado Department of State confirmed that a spreadsheet containing partial passwords to components of Colorado’s voting system was published on the Secretary of State’s website for an unknown period of time. In a statement that day, the Department of State said, "This does not pose an immediate security threat to Colorado’s elections, nor will it impact how ballots are counted."
In the wake of this, Colorado House Republicans began calling for Griswold's resignation. She told us the following day, Oct. 30, that she will not resign.
“No, I'm not going to resign,” she said in our interview. “A civil servant in the department made a serious mistake that we have actively taken action to remedy. Humans make mistakes. And that's why I've been so focused on adding more layers of security to our elections.”
You can watch our report, where we asked if she would resign, in the video below.
Griswold said since only partial passwords were exposed, it did not pose an immediate security threat to Colorado’s elections. She said a person would need two full passwords and physical access to voting equipment to cause any harm.
"This does not pose an immediate security threat. I think it is a very unfortunate situation that we do take very seriously, and a personnel investigation will be conducted by an outside party to look further into the matter after the election,” she said in October.
On Nov. 1, the Libertarian Party of Colorado filed a lawsuit against Griswold in Denver District Court. A judge has rejected a petition a few days later.
Watch our report below to learn more about arguments made in court during this case.
"In response to notice of the disclosed BIOS passwords, Respondents took down the subject worksheet and put into place a remediation protocol, after an investigation was conducted as to the disclosure of the BIOS passwords," Denver District Court Judge Kandace Gerdes's ruling reads. "The remediation protocol was implemented and within seven days, the BIOS passwords on the affected voting systems were changed and the affected equipment was examined and verified that it was not compromised."
A few weeks later, on Dec. 8, a third-party investigation concluded that the passwords were “mistakenly, unknowingly and unintentionally” posted online.
The Denver district attorney launched an investigation in mid-November and worked for seven weeks to come to a conclusion, which was announced Friday.
“After an extensive investigation by prosecutors and investigators in my office, we have concluded that there were no criminal violations of the law regarding the publication of the voting machine passwords,” DA McCann said. “Based on everything we have learned, the passwords were published in error and not 'knowingly,' as required to prove a violation of C.R.S. 1-13-708(2), or ‘knowingly, arbitrarily or capriciously,’ as required to prove a violation of CRS 18-8-405(1). There is no indication that the passwords were published in an effort to influence the outcome of an election.”
The full, 26-page investigative report from the Denver District Attorney's Office is available here and below.
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