DENVER (CN) — The Libertarian Party of Colorado called for the removal of the state’s Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold from office in a lawsuit filed on Friday, citing an incident where her office posted partial voting systems passwords online.
“Colorado law requires the revocation of the secretary’s access to the state’s voting system for causing these passwords to be published, and is punishable by a presumptive sentence of one to three years in the Department of Corrections,” the party writes in its suit.
Dating back to the state primary election in June, the secretary of state’s office’s website published a spreadsheet named “Voting Systems Inventory,” which contained 600 partial passwords on a hidden tab for elections systems in all but one of the state’s counties.
The passwords provide access to the state’s election management system, ballot scanners and its adjudication system.
In exposing the passwords, however, the Libertarian Party and 3rd Congressional District candidate James Wiley argue Griswold breached her duty and put the election at risk.
The 3rd District spans Colorado’s western border with Utah, and was represented by Republican Lauren Boebert for the last two terms. Once considered a conservative stronghold, Democrat Adam Frisch came within a few hundred votes of beating Boebert in 2020. Since Boebert moved districts, Frisch is now running against Republican Jeff Hurd.
The 3rd District is also home to Mesa County, where Tina Peters was recently sentenced to nine years in prison for offenses related to leaking voting machine passwords in 2021.
Wiley, who lives in Pueblo, has long supported Peters’ decision to back up voting machine data and believes she was unfairly prosecuted.
In their lawsuit, the plaintiffs cite the Internal Election Security Measures Act, which in 2022 outlawed exposing voting machine passwords in the wake of Peters’ data breach. The law criminalizes leaking voting machine passwords with up to three years in jail.
On the phone, Wiley told Courthouse News he wanted to hold Griswold to the same standards as Peters.
“Griswold pursued quite an aggressive campaign against Tina Peters, and yet in this situation, she claims that as a result of disclosing the leak, she’s now not responsible and there shouldn’t be any investigation of herself,” Wiley said. “I feel that’s a serious double standard.”
Wiley and the Libertarian Party, represented by Denver attorney Gary Fielder, ask the court to schedule a hearing Monday — just one day before Election Day — to remove Griswold from office and order a hand count of the 2024 election results.
“We need to establish order to have a peaceful outcome of this election which nationally we can see being very contentious and Colorado potentially now looking more and more like a swing state once again,” Wiley said.
The data remained online through Oct. 24 when the office removed it. In a release, Griswold downplayed the risks to the election, and said the passwords were immediately changed to be on the safe side.
“All of the passwords in affected counties have been changed,” Secretary of State Jena Griswold said in a statement. “Colorado has countless layers of security to ensure our elections are free and fair, and every eligible voter should know their ballot will be counted as cast.”
A spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office declined to speak citing the pending litigation.
The case has been assigned to Second Judicial District Judge Kandace Gerdes, who was appointed by Democratic Governor John Hickenlooper.