Editorial: Democrats should stop protecting their own and support an audit of the Secretary of State’s Office

Democrats on Colorado’s audit committee took a “protect-their-own” position on Monday when they voted against a performance audit of the state’s election’s division.

The person the Democrats were likely trying to protect was Secretary of State Jena Griswold, the state-wide elected official who oversees the elections division. Griswold, a Democrat, is subjected to false criticism from far-right extremists who have developed a vast conspiracy of election fraud and put her at the head of it.

She has received threats of violence and sexist attacks on her job performance that her male counterparts in Colorado’s constitutional offices have not faced. So we understand the knee-jerk desire to shield her from further unfair scrutiny.

But a performance audit is not about tracking down political ammunition. The audit reports are almost always boring recitations of best practices and good government policies. Rarely do they elicit headlines, let alone fuel campaign ads. These audits aren’t even financial audits looking for fraud or abuse.

There is ample evidence that a performance audit is needed for the Secretary of State’s office – far more evidence than is used for most other committee-initiated audits. We urge the legislative audit committee to reconsider. Sen. Lisa Frizell, the Republican chair of the Legislative Audit Committee, was right to request an audit of the elections division.

An external report extremely limited in scope, was released Monday. The investigation was prompted by the inadvertent release of ballot-counting machine passwords on the Secretary of State’s website before the November election.

We are relieved that the audit found nothing nefarious in the passwords. Instead, an employee was recklessly storing the passwords for election equipment on an inventory spreadsheet that was made public as part of the Secretary of State’s commitment to transparency. The employee typically published a .pdf version of the document with the passwords hidden and completely inaccessible. When that employee left, however, the office started publishing the spreadsheet in comma-separated format, and the hidden passwords were easily accessed by anyone who knew how to look for them by unhiding the passwords tab or sheet.

But Denver attorney Beth Doherty Quinn did find two policy violations in just this one instance – exactly the type of small infractions that a performance audit would be looking for, and exactly the type of good government changes that could prevent errors like this from occurring in the future.

Griswold committed to adopting Quinn’s seven recommendations to prevent future leaks of security information.

The elections division could clearly use some more scrutiny if two policy violations were found connected to just this one mistake.

Even more concerning than those two policy violations, however, are complaints from county clerks and recorders about the lack of communication from the Secretary of State’s office.

These complaints are not new and do not appear to be politically motivated, but rather stem from some sort of a systemic failure to support our county election officials.

The Denver Post has found email exchanges where clerks – both Democrats and Republicans – expressed frustration with the handling of the password scandal.

Frizell said this would be one of the focuses of an audit and Sen. Rod Pelton, also a Republican on the Audit Committee, said he has heard complaints from the clerks in the counties he represents.

“I just want to reiterate. I have 13 counties in my district and my county clerks have some distrust in our Secretary of State’s office,” Pelton said. “I think to strengthen that relationship, I think an audit is fully in line with this.”

Meanwhile, none of the Democrats who voted against the audit – Rep. Andrew Bosesenecker, Sen. Julie Gonzales, Rep. William Lindstedt and Sen. Dafna Michaelson Jenet – explained their opposition other than to bring up the report from Quinn.

The last time the department was audited was in 2015, but the audit didn’t focus on the elections division.

The time for an audit is now.

Sign up for Sound Off to get a weekly roundup of our columns, editorials and more.

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.