By Kevin Lundberg | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice
Nothing to see here, move along, move along…
This week it was widely reported that a “third party” investigation concluded Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold’s public posting of hundreds of passwords for months on her official website was inadvertent and therefore no harm was done.
Absent in this report is an adequate analysis of the serious compromise that occurred to the election equipment which the passwords were intended to protect (no one really knows who may have found this information online or how it may have been used to manipulate election results), nor did the report deal with the fact that the secretary of state (SOS) hid this password breach from the public and the county clerks while the election was being conducted.
The way the passwords were made available to the public may have been inadvertent, but Griswold is clearly guilty of trying to cover it up in the final days of the election and that was intentional and inexcusable.
Question: Did Jena Griswold dictate the “third party” report, or did she simply pick a “third-party” investigator who would skip the pertinent details and whitewash the story?
If there is any shred of justice to Tina Peters’ conviction (who I still maintain is innocent) and nine-plus year prison sentence for a much more minor, unintentional breach of password security (one time, one password) Griswoldgate deserves something more like a life sentence for hundreds of BIOS passwords for election equipment from all across the state, exposed to public access for months and not fully disclosed immediately to the county clerks who were at that time processing the ballots with these potentially compromised machines.
Griswoldgate reads like a cheap novel from a third-world banana republic where the winner is the villain and the good guy gets shot. I am disgusted on several levels. First, the Colorado secretary of state seems to be getting off scot-free. Secondly, where is the outcry from all other political leaders in Colorado? Are they going to just quietly step aside while this miscarriage of justice and intense corruption of our election systems continues to fester? Finally, where is the Fourth Estate (free press)? All of the news reporting I have heard and seen look like they are reading from a SOS spin team’s press release. Nothing to see here, move along, move along. Are there any professional journalists left who will dig deep into this very obvious scandal?
I do not believe we have seen all there is to yet unfold with Griswoldgate. Election integrity experts from across the country know that our votes must be protected, preserved and accurately counted and Jena Griswold has violated that trust on several levels. I trust they are paying attention to Griswoldgate.
The Colorado Legislative Audit committee has already rejected an audit request (so much for that committee demonstrating any non-partisan passions – the Democrats killed the motion). Maybe it is time for a congressional investigation…
In 2013, on the Colorado State Senate floor, I called the election bill for that year (HB13-1303) the voter fraud act. Under the leadership of Jena Griswold the potential for election fraud has been put on steroids.
Now is not the time to move along, it is time for a full accounting of all that has been happening to our elections in Colorado.
Kevin Lundberg is a former Colorado state senator and holds a weekly “Lundberg Report” grassroots conference call. Signup for the report and participate in the call at kevinlundberg.com
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