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10 30 24 Former Clerk and Recorder Matt Crane on leaked voting system passwords
But there's only one feeling like knowing your banker personally, like growing up with a bank you can count on, like being sure what you've earned is safe, secure, and local. There's only one feeling like knowing you're supporting your community. You deserve more from a bank. You deserve an institution that stood strong for generations. Bank of Colorado, there's only one member FDIC. The Colorado Secretary of State's Office admits it inadvertently posted a spreadsheet to its website with a hidden tab that includes voting system password state Republicans called attention to the mistake in an email blast, alerting the public to the Excel file. Joining us now on the KOA Common Spirit Health Hotline to talk more about it is Executive Director of the Colorado Clerks Association and a former Republican Arapahoe County clerk. It's Matt Crane. Matt, thank you so much for your time this morning. My pleasure. Good morning. Walk us through a little bit of what we learned yesterday. Jenna Griswold's office has already issued a statement saying that those passwords are only a part of the security process we see with our elections. However, should Colorado voters be concerned in any way? So okay, to your first question, Colorado Clerks learned yesterday about this, about the exposed passwords online, and it is a concern. But I think what the Secretary said is also correct in that there are layers and layers of security around our election infrastructure. And so the fact that the passwords are out there is concerning, but these are things that clerks have practiced about over the last four years preparing for this election going through different scenarios. What is scenarios? And so this is something that we've certainly practiced over the last four years, and now we work our incident response plan. So those passwords are being changed. All of these components are under 24/7 video surveillance. They're in strict access-controlled areas. And of course, here in Colorado, everybody votes on a paper ballot, which is the official record of the election. So if there was some kind of compromise and there was a conflict between the stand results and the paper results, we can go right to the paper. We audit the paper ballots to ensure that the outcomes are correct. Matt, how does something like this happen? I think right now it just seems like a junior staffer was careless and made a mistake. And there's no excuse for it, and I'm sure the secretary and her team are going through their protocols to update them and make sure nothing like this ever happens again. Matt, when you talk about these passwords, what do they normally do? What access does it usually give the election clerks when they have the complete passwords and in person and all the other security precautions? What does that usually lead to? Sure. So that's a great question. So the passwords that were exposed were to the bios of the computer. So the actual computer itself, not the operating system, certainly not the voting system. But if these passwords did fall into the wrong hands and they did get physical access, which is another important thing, people would have to get physical access and pass all of our other security controls to really implement any attack on that specific component. So that's something to keep in mind. But there are other layers too. There's passwords to the operating system. There's passwords to the election management system or the voting system. So again, there's multiple layers of security. Matt, I know your role, you're supposed to be agnostic, but concerning what happened in Mesa County with Tina Peters and what the secretary of state said about that situation, then having this happen to the secretary of state, do you see some incongruence with how this has been handled, received, and how the public handles and receives this? Well, I think we have to say when something's not good, and the exposure of these passwords is not good, but I think if you look at the two scenarios, you had a junior staffer here who accidentally exposed the passwords, again, it's not good. But that's completely different than an elected clerk and recorder undermining her own election system, willfully leading a security breach, taking somebody's identity, giving it to somebody else, turning off their cameras, and sneaking somebody in on a weekend, and then having those passwords get exposed online. So while I understand people say, well, isn't this the same thing, it's not the same thing. This was not something that was purposely led by the secretary's office where Tina ended up in jail and which she deserved for actively leading a breach and violating her oath of office. Two totally different scenarios. Matt, maybe not jail time, but could this cause any legal action or any further investigation for this reported junior staffer, any other city officials from this election's official status? So I'm sure that there are different campaigns out there that are looking at what legal actions may be around this, so we'll have to wait and see what happens in that regard. In terms of any other investigation or criminal investigations, I'm not aware of any at this time, but I'm sure that the questions are being asked, should people be going down those roads? But right now, I want to stress it doesn't look like it was done in a nefarious manner. It looks like it was a mistake, which is, again, quite different from Mesa County. Again, realizing your role is supposed to be agnostic, but any curiosity as to why it took the Colorado GOP to reveal what happened here and not some other source, if you will. Yeah. Well, we do have a lot of questions about that and I can't tell you clerks are not pleased that there was a delay in finding out, but we continue to have conversations with the secretary of state's office about these things and revisit to make sure that something like this doesn't never happen again. Information with sharing is important both ways, right? It can't just be clerks reporting to the secretary's office. It also has to be the secretary's office reporting to clerks so that we can take steps we need to make sure that we are hardening our security posture and as prepared as possible. Do we have any idea how long these passwords were out for the public to view? It looks like they were out from some point in mid to late June until last week. That final question from us, I believe, on this. You already kind of have a target on your back, a lot of clerk and recorders. Does this just make your job, regardless of the intention, the mistake was intentional and not whatever setting that aside, does it make your job harder in the public eye? Oh, it does exponentially harder because we have to, over the last four years, we've had to push back on so many lives and disinformation have truths about our elections. And so, unforced errors like this that rightly raise concerns, it does make our jobs a lot harder. But again, I want to tell people and reassure people that there are multiple layers of security. Clerks are taking a lot of different steps to make sure that your vote will count and it will count accurately, meaning as you voted it, as you intended it to vote. So we want voters to know that we still have great confidence that this election will be accurate and they can trust the results. The director of the Colorado Clerks Association and a former Republican, Arapahoe County Clerk, it's Matt Crane. Matt, thank you so much for your time this morning. Thank you both. Have a great day. We have reached out to the Colorado Secretary of State's office, Janet Quizwald. We have heard that she does not want to comment at this time, at least speaking with us. It's 825. It's Colorado's morning news. There's only one feeling like knowing your banker personally, like growing up with a bank you can count on, like being sure what you've earned is safe, secure, and local. There's only one feeling like knowing you're supporting your community. You deserve more from a bank. You deserve an institution that stood strong for generations. Bank of Colorado, there's only one member FDIC.