The Demagoguery

Wissel is at it again… “Double, double toil and trouble…”

Take, for instance, the admittedly dumbshit glitch the Colorado Secretary of State’s office interjected into this election by somehow allowing an unnamed “civil servant” whose since left state employment to expose partial passwords related to the state’s voting system. Not only does that reflect poorly on Griswold, but never fear, every BIG LIE believer, conspiracy-minded nutcase in the state and nation will ballyhoo from the rooftops: See, we told you!!!!!!

But leave it to the demagogues, like Wissel, to sign his name to a letter (a letter that uses reasonably correct grammar, so we’ll assume Wissel didn’t write it) that characterizes what happened as a deliberate LEAK of BIOS (basic input/output system) passwords by Secretary of State Griswold. The letter demands a hand count of ballots and an ICX (Dominion system touchscreen in-person voting equipment) printout after the close of polls on November 5.

“Lastly, I remind you,” the letter reads, “that the severity of the security breach is yet another example of why globally paper ballots are the ‘gold standard’ for voting. We need to stop wasting taxpayer money on these expensive electronic voting systems and return, to a Constitutional, One Day, In- Person voting with ID to Verify Citizenship with Hand Counted Paper Ballots. This is the only way to ensure the results of our elections are true. Given this colossal breach of security and voter trust, hand counting may be the only way to secure the 2024 elections in Colorado.”

Wissel and Commissioner Amy Mitchell have never liked those new-fangled machines, which have been proven to be significantly more accurate than people when counting ballots. Think about it. The machine has only one job to do—count ballots. The person, while county ballots, can’t help glancing at the busty blond at the table across from him or how good those tacos are going to taste once he gets out of there, or the woman who wonders if the hubby will remember it’s her birthday as she relooks at the last ballot, momentarily forgetting which pile it should go in.

We should not be surprised Wissel and his MAGA Republicans favor restricting the opportunity to vote for obvious reasons. Obvious reasons? Yeah, suppose you make it harder to cast a ballot. In that case, the slimy garbage on the left will give up when confronted with obstacles intended to accomplish that. Only real Americans should be able to vote. You know, only those who in our past were not black, Native, Irish, Italian, or women.

I wasn’t at that rally. Am I a real American? Do I love my country?  

The resolution from the Park County MAGA Republican Party at the county assembly on March 23, 2024 that dealt with elections reads:  

Resolution Number 1: The voters of Park County and the voters of Colorado have increasingly lost faith that our elections are secure and have become disenfranchised from the process…

Any fool knows this preamble, presented as a categorical truth, is neither categorical nor axiomatic. Instead, it is a Big Lie verse in the MAGA Book of Revelations where faith is the key. Folks rely on faith when they don’t have definitive evidence to prove anything.

Flowing from this lie, the Park County MAGA Republican Resolution No. 1 demanded :

a) Single-day elections; b) In-person voting at precincts using printed poll books; c) Hand counts of ballots at the precinct level; d) No mail-in voting except for military or those housebound or traveling. No universal mail-in ballot opportunity unless a voter affirmatively requests a mail-in ballot well in advance of the election; e) Walk-in registration and voting on the same day is eliminated; f) Closed primaries where Unaffiliated voters cannot participate in party primaries; g) The Colorado County Clerks Association be defunded, and no longer have any influence on County Clerks.”

It is instructive to provide the extent to which Commission Chair Amy Mitchell is buried within the heap of MAGA claptrap regarding the Dominion machines.

Mitchell repeatedly spouted bogus claims, which have been proven false. Take, for instance, her arguments in the BOCC work session and general Board of County Commissioner meetings of October 19, 2021. The purchase of Clear Ballot machines was on the agenda on that day. These machines are approved by the State of Colorado, along with the Dominion machines for vote tabulations. Debra Green, the Clerk and Recorder at the time, proposed the Clear Ballot purchase as an audit check on the vote totals provided by the Dominion machines. Mitchell opposed the purchase, reasoning from her MAGA-inspired dismal recapitulation of lies that, among other things, the Dominion and Clear Ballot machines share the same software and algorithms. Remarkably, she said that she would prefer the money for the Clear Ballot machines go instead to an audit of the 2020 election because, quote, “2020 is still broken,” and “the Dominion machines and Clear Ballot machines are guilty by association because it has been proved they facilitate fraud across the nation.” She also repeated the lie (included in the county assembly resolution) that all county’s citizens are concerned about election integrity.  

No, Dominion and Clear Ballot do not share software or algorithms. Each company has proprietary software and systems, including Election Management Systems (EMS). To suggest otherwise is to expose one’s ignorance of the technology and the nature of competing private companies that manufacture software-based systems. The Big Lie conspirators have won no lawsuits that claim the machines perpetrate fraud, regardless of what Mike, the Pillow Guy, Lindell, Doctor Douglas Frank, Tina Peters, Lauren Boebert, Ron Hanks, Donald Trump, or even Amy Mitchell says. Remember, too, that Michell said in October 2021 that Park County’s best interests would be served by spending ten thousand dollars to audit the 2020 election rather than purchasing the Clear Ballot machines to verify future tabulations of vote counts.

There is so much more to be said, but I’ll let it suffice to provide a perspective from Colorado Pols:

The accidental public posting of these passwords is without question humiliating for the Secretary of State’s office, and we’ve been unsparing in our criticism of Secretary Griswold’s initial response to the controversy. With that said, this mistake does not make the usual suspects rushing in to exploit the situation in order to sow doubt in Colorado’s elections any more credible. Scott Gessler still has his license to practice law unlike several other attorneys who represented Trump in the fruitless lawsuits in late 2020 challenging the election results, but Gessler was nonetheless rebuked by the Nevada Supreme Court for his lawsuit on behalf of Trump based on rank falsehoods and conjecture substituted for facts. We don’t hear much from Colorado GOP chairman Dave Williams anymore since his job now is pretty much solely to siphone money from the party coffers through the next party leadership election in the spring, but after a year of offending and alienating every Republican outside his dwindling clique of supporters, Williams is one of the few Republican figures in Colorado with even less credibility than Scott Gessler.

These are the bad actors who have been given an opening by the SoS office’s mistake, and that in the end could be the biggest lasting consequence. Even though there is no reason to believe that any voting systems were actually compromised, rightly turning down the Trump campaign’s over-the-top demand to restart the count of millions of ballots is practically guaranteed to be the pretext by which Trump and his local allies claim the election in Colorado he is certain to lose is illegitimate. No amount of evidence to the contrary will be enough to convince them, because Trump’s supporters don’t want to be convinced.

For all of us trying to sort through what just happened without ulterior motives, the takeaway is simple: yes, this was a big mistake by the Secretary of State’s office at perhaps the worst possible moment–but numerous additional layers of security prevented any real-world impact other than the time spent changing the passwords on voting machines scattered across the state. Colorado voters have nothing to fear casting their votes with the same highly secure and accurate systems they’ve trusted for years.

Defending the integrity of Colorado’s elections from Donald Trump is all that matters before Election Day. It’s more important than any individual’s reputation and more important than settling pre-existing political scores.

Happy voting tomorrow, even if you don’t reflect what Mitchell and Wissel believe are real Americans.

BTW here’s the Colorado Secretary of State’s latest narrative on the issue:

Department of State Updates Coloradans on Election Security, Password Disclosure

Denver, Colo. – The Department of State today released the following update on the password disclosure matter. Secretary of State Jena Griswold underscored Colorado’s multilayered, effective election security, and issued the following statement:“Colorado’s elections are safe and Coloradans will have their voices heard on Election Day. Our elections have many layers of security. Ensuring that Colorado’s elections are secure and accessible has been and will always be our top priority, which is why the Department of State, along with County Clerks and election workers across the state, address any and every potential risk to our elections with the utmost seriousness. I am regretful for this error. I am dedicated to making sure we address this matter fully and that mistakes of this nature never happen again.” Key Election Equipment Security Measures:Under Colorado law, voting equipment must be stored in secure rooms that require a secure ID badge to access. That ID badge creates an access log that tracks who enters a secure area and when. There is 24/7 video camera recording on all election equipment. Clerks are required to maintain restricted access to secure ballot areas.No person may be present in a secure area unless they are authorized to do so or are supervised by an authorized and background-checked employee. There are also strict chain of custody requirements that track when a voting systems component has been accessed and by whom.It is a felony to tamper with voting equipment. Updates on the Password DisclosureThe Colorado Department of State, with support from the Governor’s Office of Information Technology and Colorado Bureau of Investigation, completed updating passwords and verifying the security of all of the affected active voting systems components on October 31. The Department has confirmed that no settings had been changed on any impacted active voting equipment. On October 24, the Colorado Department of State became aware of the disclosure of passwords on a subpage of the Department’s website. The Department was informed of the data disclosure by a voting machines vendor. The Department did not initially know whether the passwords were active. The Department immediately removed the passwords from the website and consulted with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which is tasked with assisting states and local governments in protecting the nation’s election infrastructure, as well as Dominion Voting Systems, which provides voting equipment for 62 of Colorado’s 64 counties. At the same time, the Department began looking at web traffic to the subpage and investigated whether there were signs of these passwords or anything related to them on the internet or dark web. The Department determined that the data disclosure did not pose an immediate security threat.That same evening, the Department began a thorough assessment of whether the passwords were in use in active voting equipment. There are over 2,100 voting components across the state. Making this public without understanding the size and scope of the disclosure, and without having a concrete plan for determining our technical and outreach strategy, would run contrary to cybersecurity best practices and carried a significant risk of fueling the major disinformation environment that surrounds elections today.  On October 25, the Department determined that 34 of Colorado’s 64 counties were affected by the disclosure.  On October 29, the Department finished identifying the specific active voting system components affected by the password disclosure. Department staff immediately began changing passwords. County Clerks were informed that day; many had already learned of the disclosure from a press release issued by the Colorado Republican Party.  By the end of Thursday, October 31, all affected active equipment had undergone password updates with support from the Governor’s Office of Information Technology, Colorado Bureau of Investigation, and Colorado’s dedicated County Clerks. While changing passwords, the Department also confirmed that no settings had been changed on any impacted active voting equipment.Through the Department’s assessment, it was determined that a former staff member created a spreadsheet that contained the passwords in a hidden tab. Storing passwords in this manner is not in line with the Department’s required data security practices and training. The staff member amicably left the Department before this matter took place. This spreadsheet was posted online on June 21, 2024, and it remained on the Department’s subpage for voting system equipment until it was taken down on October 24, 2024. The Department is engaging a well-regarded law firm to conduct an outside investigation into the event, determining how it happened, how it could be prevented in the future, and any recommendations for improvement of practices and procedures. Once the investigation has been finalized, the Department will release any findings as the law permits. The Department will require additional cybersecurity training with all staff, including password management and security procedures. The Department has multiple systems in place to harden our security. All employees are required to take annual cybersecurity trainings. Department policy and training requires that employees must use a password safe. Our passwords meet some of the highest security standards recognized by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.The Department conducts risk and vulnerability assessments, including penetration tests and external testing, with agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security to check for vulnerabilities. As recently as August, the Department of Homeland Security tested for internal and external vulnerabilities. In addition, the Department’s external website systems are scanned for vulnerabilities by a third-party service.

Yes, as the Colorado Pols piece noted: “Even though there is no reason to believe that any voting systems were actually compromised, rightly turning down the Trump campaign’s over-the-top demand to restart the count of millions of ballots is practically guaranteed to be the pretext by which Trump and his local allies claim the election in Colorado he is certain to lose is illegitimate. No amount of evidence to the contrary will be enough to convince them because Trump’s supporters don’t want to be convinced.