Jena Griswold's Greatest Gaffes: A Reign of Error at the Secretary of State's Office
November 7, 2024
from Westword
Photo by: Evan Semón Photography
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold has come under fire for the latest election security fiasco...but she should be used to the heat by now.
Hundreds of current passwords to voting equipment in 34 Colorado counties were exposed by Griswold's office, posted on the agency's website for months on a hidden tab of a public spreadsheet. The Colorado Republican Party broke the news five days after Griswold says her office learned of the blunder on October 24.
A wave of backlash followed the revelation, with leaders of the state Republican Party demanding that Griswold resign, the Libertarian Party unsuccessfully suing to require a hand count of ballots in impacted counties, and even Democratic Governor Jared Polis calling for an independent investigation. Instead, Griswold has hired an outside law firm to look into the incident.
"I am regretful for this error," Griswold said in a statement on November 4. "I am dedicated to making sure we address this matter fully and that mistakes of this nature never happen again.”
Griswold has declined to resign over the mishap, emphasizing that the state's election system remains secure despite the leak. Denver District Court Judge Kandace Gerdes denied the Libertarian Party's hand-count lawsuit on Election Day, November 5, finding no evidence that voting system components were compromised. And given the results of the national vote, it's unlikely that election deniers will again take aim at Colorado...for now.
Two passwords are required to make changes to a voting system, according to the Secretary of State's Office; the leaked passwords made up only half of that pair. In addition, the passwords can only be used in person with physical access to the voting equipment, which is mandated to be stored in secure rooms that require ID badges to access and have 24/7 video surveillance.
But the security of the election hasn't quelled the concerns of Griswold's critics. As Colorado's top election official since 2019, Griswold has continuously attracted controversy, leading some detractors to question whether Colorado's gold-standard election system is successful because of Griswold or in spite of her.
“I have no trust that Secretary Griswold is capable of leading our election system," House Minority Leader Rose Pugliese said in response to news of the breach. “Griswold’s reckless disregard for professional standards and consistent lack of transparency has threatened trust in our democratic system by causing doubt in the security of our election process."
The role of secretary of state is rarely so high-profile or contentious, though there have been a few notable exceptions. Former secretary Scott Gessler — who now leads the law firm representing Donald Trump's campaign that initially called for Colorado counties affected by the password leak to re-scan all ballots — earned a reputation as the "Honey Badger" while he was in office. As secretary of state, the late Vikki Buckley was the only Colorado official to greet the National Rifle Association when the NRA convention came to Denver in the days after the Columbine shootings.
But since Griswold hit the scene, her political moves and errors by the office have repeatedly landed her in the spotlight for the wrong reasons. Here's a rundown of some of Griswold's greatest gaffes as secretary of state:
Mesa County Voter Fraud Announcement
Days before news of the password leak broke, Griswold was already facing scrutiny for her announcement of a mostly thwarted voter-fraud scheme out of Mesa County.
At least a dozen ballots were stolen from registered voters in the mail, filled out and submitted fraudulently. The state's signature verification process stopped all but three of the ballots from being counted, according to the Secretary of State's Office. Griswold highlighted the incident as a success of the election system's security, but her decision to publicize the situation a day after local election officials notified her office caused some upset.
“While we understand the Secretary of State’s desire to make public statements, this is our community and our investigation,” Mesa County Clerk Bobbie Gross said in a statement. “It is critical that we follow proper procedures to ensure a thorough and effective investigation without tipping off those involved. The people of Mesa County deserve transparency and accountability, but it must be done in a manner that protects the integrity of the investigation.”
There have long been tensions between Griswold and the state's county clerks, some of whom have accused the secretary of taking credit for their work, lacking communication and increasing partisanship. And things only got more tense when the clerks learned of the password leak through a Colorado Republican Party press release, not Griswold's office.
Sending Voter Registration Mailers to Non-Citizens
In one of her most high-profile slip-ups, in 2022 Griswold's office sent around 30,000 mailers to non-citizens, who are not eligible to vote, encouraging them to register and providing instructions for how to do so. The mistake was attributed to a database glitch related to the state's list of residents with driver's licenses.
The incident spurred national media coverage and conspiratorial accusations of fraud within Colorado's election system at a time when the nation was still reeling from Trump's election-rigging claims during the 2020 presidential election.
Griswold defended herself, saying her office responded to the mistake immediately and that none of the non-citizens who were sent mailers tried to register to vote. At the time, however, immigration advocates worried that her mistake could result in the deportation of some of the recipients living in the country without authorization if they attempted to register because of the mailers.
Two years earlier, Griswold's office faced a similar controversy when it was accused of sending around a dozen voter-registration mailers to non-citizens and deceased individuals.
Telling Voters They Hadn't Voted
Also in 2022, Griswold's office used Colorado's ballot tracking system to inaccurately notify specific Coloradans that they had not yet voted when they had already cast their ballots; 9News reported the blunder in a scathing commentary slamming Griswold's "repeated errors" as damaging confidence in Colorado's elections.
Although the incident was largely overshadowed by the non-citizen mailing blunder, it created confusion for voters and county clerks during an already hectic election season.
Hundreds of Voters Registered to One Address
In 2022, it was revealed that 568 people had been registered to vote at a single duplex in Weld County. The address belonged to a truck-driving school that, because of the state's automatic voter registration system, was receiving dozens of ballots meant for its students, who did not live at the address and were only there for training.
Since the school returned the ballots to the county, there was no voter fraud — but the opportunity was there, and it revealed a major issue in the automatic voter registration process that was not addressed until 9News investigated the situation.
This incident, in addition to Griswold's sending voter registration mailers to non-citizens, prompted the Denver Post to advocate against Griswold's reelection in 2022, endorsing her Republican challenger instead.
"Griswold has left us unimpressed with her unwillingness to address problems and issues as they arise and even a reluctance to admit when mistakes have been made, or things could be improved," the editorial board wrote. "She is completely dismissive of ours, and anyone else’s valid questions and concerns about election integrity."
Telling Media Not to Report Election Results
Griswold got into hot water during her first general election in 2020, when she made a series of social media posts demanding that the media not report election results the night of the election.
The posts were reportedly part of an attempt to start a countrywide conversation calling for “national media executives” not to make projections or announce any election results on election night as part of a “#PressPause” campaign. But that call immediately inspired backlash and accusations that Griswold was attempting to suppress information from the public.
Griswold later deleted the posts and apologized, clarifying that she wanted media outlets to refrain from calling a winner in the presidential race until all of the votes were tallied — but not before she received major criticism from Democrats, Republicans and journalists alike.
"Demanding journalists to withhold verifiable facts or rational projections is counter to how a free democracy works,” Democratic Senator Steve Fenberg said at the time. "This will only cause mass confusion and creates an opening for reckless behavior from the President."
Fox News host Laura Ingraham was quick to pile on: “She should be fired just for saying that."
Lawsuits
The password-leak lawsuit is far from the first legal battle Griswold and her office have faced.
Several lawsuits in which plaintiffs accused Griswold or her office of violating the law have resulted in settlements, though the settlements are not admissions of fault. These incidents include allegations of discrimination in the workplace based on race/ethnicity; improperly withholding data about deceased voters; and failing to remove ineligible voters from the state’s rolls, leading to artificially high registration rates.
Self-Promotion Accusations
Six months into her tenure as secretary of state, Griswold launched an exploratory committee to examine running for the U.S. Senate. She ultimately decided against it, but the move drew criticism from those angry that Griswold would seek to leave her elected position so soon, accusing her of not caring about her current role and trying to use it as a springboard to higher office.
Similar complaints arose in 2020 and 2022, when Griswold spent millions of taxpayer dollars on TV ads in which she discussed election procedures and warned against misinformation. Critics argued that Griswold was using public money to boost her own profile, particularly ahead of her 2022 reelection campaign. Axios reported that county clerks who wanted to spend the ad money on improving voting access had been "rebuffed."
Some county clerks had expressed frustration with Griswold's self-promoting behavior in the past. In 2020, clerks complained to Colorado Public Radio that while Griswold made continuous appearances on national TV, she was not offering them guidance.
"It would almost seem that she's just looking for her next position and not really in it to win it as the secretary," Chaffee County Clerk Lori Mitchell said at the time. “Can everybody just put their head down, do the work, make this a successful election for all the 64 counties, concentrate on our state and not these national conversations?"
Politicizing Secretary of State Role
The most consistent complaint levied against Griswold is that she has aggressively politicized a position historically expected to be treated as non-partisan.
When she took office, Griswold was the first Democrat elected as Colorado's secretary of state in sixty years. Despite the long-held party dominance, her Republican predecessors largely steered away from polarizing messaging and were admonished when they stepped out of line — such as when Gigi Dennis was called to "take off her Republican Party badge" for trying to issue rules that could have stifled political donations by unions in 2006; or when Gessler was slapped with an ethics violation ruling for using state funds to pay for airfare to GOP events in 2013.
Griswold's predecessor, Wayne Williams, even appeared in a commercial with the candidate who'd beaten him to assure Coloradans that the election system was safe and secure.
But Griswold has made partisanship the rule, not the exception, during her tenure. Months after she was sworn in, she used her office to send a press release calling for a boycott of Alabama over the state's abortion ban, a release that was edited by Planned Parenthood before it was made public.
Some county clerks have said Griswold's political moves make conservative voters worry whether their ballots will be treated fairly. In Colorado, 88 percent of Democrats said they thought state elections would be run fairly in 2024, compared to 63 percent of independents and 54 percent of Republicans, according to a January poll by the American Politics Research Lab at the University of Colorado Boulder.
After six Coloradans sued to keep Trump off of Colorado's presidential primary ballot because of his actions on January 6, 2021, a judge determined that he could stay on. In response, Griswold noted that he'd "engaged in an insurrection" and called the judge's ruling a "get-out-of-jail-free card." And in February, when the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that Trump could be on the Colorado ballot, Griswold continued to speak out against him nationally...even though Trump was a candidate in the election she was responsible for overseeing.
An election that Trump has now won.
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