Colorado officials said Thursday that a local county clerk allowed an unauthorized person into a secure facility during an annual upgrade to the county's election equipment software, compromising the equipment.
The Mesa County clerk, Tina Peters, could be in legal trouble. She's currently at a conference led by a prominent election conspiracy theorist.
That security breach means Mesa County, in the far western part of the state, will not be able to use the equipment for its fall election. While the unauthorized access did not create an imminent, direct security risk to Colorado's elections, Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said her office's investigation confirmed that the unauthorized person did release the passwords for the underlying voting machine software online.
"We know that that information was posted by an extreme conspiracy theorist last week," Griswold said, referring to the Gateway Pundit, a conservative news site that traffics in election conspiracy theories.
She has prohibited Mesa County from using the current Dominion Voting equipment for the next election. The county can replace it and install new equipment in the next few weeks or do a hand count this November.
...At a press conference Thursday, Griswold said her investigators found that an unauthorized person's name was entered into the log of people who were present for a secure software update conducted by Dominion employees at the county election division in late May.
Griswold said the person's presence violated the rules for several reasons. "He is not an employee — you have to be an employee to attend these. You also have to be background checked and the County Clerk's office specifically misled my office saying that he did comply with the rules."
Videos and photos from that update were later shared online by Ron Watkins, an influential member of the QAnon conspiracy movement.
Mesa County District Attorney Dan Rubinstein has assigned an investigator to look into the security breach, which could potentially lead to criminal charges.