By Pamela Poll | Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice
As a Colorado citizen who has read the summaries of the Mesa County Reports and naturally takes great interest in the question of the security of Colorado’s election process, I would like to share what I’ve discovered.
What Clerk Peters did to preserve the Mesa County election data from the 2020 and 2021 elections was her duty to Colorado citizens and to the law. Clerk Peters had been told that the new software installation in 2021 known as the “Trusted Build”, ordered by Secretary of State Jena Griswold, would erase the 2020 and 2021 election data. Preserving election data on a server as required by Colorado law should be standard practice.
Three cyber security experts examined the election system and data. In my opinion, for the sake of election transparency, an independent cyber audit should become standard practice after every election that uses computer voting machines to tabulate votes.
The comparison of the data before and after the “Trusted Build” software installation did show that both the 2020 and 2021 election data were erased. My understanding is that this “Trusted Build” software installation was done in every Colorado county. I also understand that this erased data was required by Colorado law to be preserved for 25 months following an election. So the question is — why was it erased — especially when there existed so much controversy over the 2020 presidential race? Why hasn’t Secretary of State Griswold been asked that question?
The media reports there was no fraud in Mesa County elections. I wonder if they even read the Mesa County Reports or discussed their findings with the three authors of the reports who have been smeared as ‘grifters’ with no basis for that slander. I read their impressive bios: 1) a former chief cyber security strategist for AT&T, 2) a full-stack software engineer with bachelor degrees in computer science and mathematics, and 40 years of experience in “big data” analysis in some of the largest defense and industry corporations in the USA, and 3) a distinguished computer consultant and senior lecturer emeritus in computer science and engineering at Texas A&M with a doctorate degree from Harvard.
Their reports found that the election system used in Mesa County had major security vulnerabilities. The reports found the system was easy to hack and had many wireless devices installed. The author of Mesa Reports One and Two, Doug Gould, explains that the mere presence of wireless devices opens the voting system to attack. “ ‘Internet’ or ‘no internet’ is irrelevant.” Please read at least the report summaries here: www.tinapeters.us/reports. They are at the beginning of each report.
Mesa Report One found that the voting system was not secure and did not comply with required 2002 Voting System Standards to protect the system. Mesa Report Two found unauthorized software (Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio) was installed on the election server — a fact admitted to by Matt Crane in 2022, then Executive Director of the Colorado County Clerk’s Association (See ‘Response to Matt Crane’ link below.) I asked a friend who understands cyber security why that software should never be on a voting system. He shared with me that “The database is what stores the tabulators’ interpretation of a ballot image. A database can be hacked with simple scripts that can change the votes in a SQL database.”
Another finding of Mesa Report Two is that in violation of Colorado election law, mandatory audit logs that track who accessed the Election Management Server were not preserved on the system. This major violation of election law should not be tolerated.
Mesa Report Three claims that votes in both 2020 and 2021 were manipulated in the election server. If you’d like to see an explanation of how votes were manipulated, the two authors who wrote the report are interviewed here: www.tinyurl.com/3mesareport.
In 2022, retired Col. Shawn Smith sent to members of the Colorado legislature a detailed response to criticisms of the Mesa County Reports by Matt Crane that can be read here: www.tinyurl.com/ResponseToMattCrane. During his military career, Smith was responsible for testing and testing oversight for some of our nation’s most complex computer-based national security systems. His professional evaluation of Colorado’s voting systems is that they are not secure. Here is a short video demo of a cyber security professional using the Mesa County data from 2020 to demonstrate how insecure our Colorado elections are: www.tinyurl.com/p9w2fvcv.
Colorado election officials could not have known about these major security flaws prior to the Mesa County Reports publication since they are not allowed to examine the election server data because the election software companies claim that their software is proprietary. As a voter, this makes no sense to me. Why would any state official agree to a contract with any election software company that makes election data off-limits? In an era where adversaries of the United States routinely hack our most important infrastructure systems, how is this responsible or reasonable?
In fact, at the June 16, 2023, meeting of the Colorado Bipartisan Election Advisory Commission, I asked the question as to why we don’t do cyber audits of Colorado elections since that’s the only way we can know if the votes were tabulated correctly. I was told “Because it’s against the law.” Why on Earth would this basic precaution be against the law in Colorado?
No election in the USA should require faith to believe the results. U.S. federal and Colorado election laws demand absolute accuracy and transparency. But, since the Mesa County Reports were released, Colorado legislators have made our elections less transparent. Bill SB22-153 made it illegal “to create, or disclose to any person an image of the hard drive of any voting system component…” This law now prohibits what Clerk Peters did. In effect, it denies Colorado voters from having the option to have their election system evaluated by qualified third-party cyber security analysts.
Also, a 2023 Colorado bill that would have prohibited the use of voting systems in Colorado that are capable of establishing wireless connections (HB23-1055) was killed in committee. This does not inspire confidence in our elections. In fact, it does the opposite.
Clerk Peters has been subjected to repeated persecutions for exposing data that shows Colorado’s elections are not secure — something all Colorado citizens have a right to know. She has been purposely humiliated, raided by the FBI, arrested in public, had her freedom of movement restricted, spent time in jail and still faces the prospect of a future in jail. She is a brave Gold Star Mom who has endured a nightmare. This Colorado citizen sees her as a HERO. She has not undermined or compromised our elections. The Mesa County Reports indicate our elections were already undermined and compromised. Clerk Peters wants what every American citizen is owed — honest and transparent elections — without which we essentially live as slaves in a Banana Republic.
Why should we ignore the evidence presented by qualified cyber security experts in the Mesa County Reports that found real vulnerabilities as well as actual violations of the law? I am baffled by this state of denial and lack of curiosity by our state election officials and politicians. Everything we do to win elections is useless if our voting system is compromised. Many Americans already believe their vote is meaningless.
My hope is that we citizens of Colorado will not be satisfied with the status quo, but will demand that the security issues and law violations revealed in our voting systems be seriously addressed. We will not continue to blindly trust. We will not vote by faith. No election data should be hidden. Sixty-two percent of voters polled by Rasmussen Reports believe cheating will affect the results of the 2024 election. We will not survive as a nation unless this issue is resolved and trust restored.
For an online version of this article with active links, visit: www.tinyurl.com/t-peters-v-or-h
Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.