By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice
Colorado voters expected a routine post–Election Day canvass after the November 4 coordinated election. Instead, El Paso County became ground zero for the latest crisis involving Secretary of State Jena Griswold’s office after a canvass board member noticed that the numbers on the state’s website didn’t match the county’s certified reports.
The mismatch surfaced publicly after businessman and election analyst Peter Bernegger posted screenshots of the Election Night Reporting (ENR) CSV file on Twitter/X:
What began as one discrepancy quickly revealed a statewide reporting failure. The ENR CSV file published by the Secretary of State contained contest-level totals that didn’t add up across dozens of races. During an emergency call Thursday evening, clerks confirmed the issue appeared across any county with precinct splits.
Meanwhile, the Secretary of State’s office has offered no public statement on the reporting failure, leaving Coloradans without guidance on whether the problem affected the votes they cast on Nov. 4.
What the El Paso discovery reveals
El Paso County’s canvass uncovered a defect that other clerks had already discovered. “It was shared that this issue was found and reported to the SOS office around four years ago,” Clerk Steve Schleiker said. “Some clerks disabled the CSV because they knew it wasn’t good information.”
The ENR CSV—the file Coloradans download to verify unofficial results—inflated “ballots cast” in precinct-split districts. Schleiker said the error may never have been caught without the canvass board member who printed the Secretary of State’s spreadsheet and began comparing it to county reports. “We started going through the math and two thirds of the report did not match any of our reports or data,” he said.
Despite the warnings, the state continued publishing the flawed CSV every election cycle.
The math that didn’t match
The issue became clear when a canvass board member printed the ENR CSV file—a document the county does not use for tabulation—and noticed several contests failing the basic audit formula.
Staff called Schleiker in. “We basically started going through the math and two thirds of the report did not match any of our reports or data,” he said. The inconsistencies originated entirely from the Secretary of State’s ENR tool, created by the vendor SOE and published through the Clarity platform.
Handwritten notes on the SOS CSV printout highlight the problem. The canvass board member circled the “ballots cast” column and wrote “A + B = C ?,” questioning whether the SOS totals could be squared with the county’s certified numbers.
On page 1, the Commissioner District 5 race shows 7,234 excess ballots when compared to the county’s reconciled total of 18,590 ballots cast.
In the Fountain mayor race, the SOS CSV listed 6,563 ballots, while El Paso County’s certified results showed 5,068—a gap of 1,495 votes cast.
The same issue occurred with the Cheyenne Mountain School District 12 board race. The SOS CSV reported 11,042 ballots cast, while county records show 8,274—a difference of 2,768.
According to Schleiker, the ENR file was “doubling those votes” in precincts split across multiple districts. “This issue is not related to El Paso County’s election systems or tabulation,” he said. “The problem lies entirely with the Secretary of State’s election night reporting CSV file.”
Schleiker said the Secretary of State’s office told him the problem came from the ENR vendor, SOE, which generates the statewide reporting files.
But he questions why a defect known for years had never been corrected. “If the vendor cannot figure this out, then you do not provide the information to the public,” he said. “Or you go to bid for a new contract with somebody that actually has the competency to figure this out.”
He also said the vendor’s work lacked basic oversight. “There’s no checks, there’s no balances and it creates confusion,” he said.
Schleiker asked the Secretary of State’s office to attend El Paso County’s canvass board meeting in person or appear virtually through Teams so residents and canvass members could hear the explanation directly. “I feel this is your mistake,” he told them. “You need to be down here. You need to explain this to our canvass board.” The request was denied.
Transparency reversed when the state took the data down
As word spread among clerks, the Secretary of State removed the ENR summary reports from public view. No banner. No correction. No explanation.
“Once you put something out there for the citizens, you cannot retract it,” Schleiker said. “I told them it would create suspicion.”
Removing the data prevented voters, journalists and clerks from verifying results. It obscured the problem instead of addressing it.
The pattern was similar during the BIOS password exposure, when the Secretary of State left sensitive information online for months and only removed it after the issue became public, leaving clerks to answer questions they were never briefed on.
What this means for voter trust
Schleiker said El Paso County’s certified results aren’t the issue—they were thoroughly reviewed by his staff and the bipartisan teams who conducted the canvass and audits. The discrepancies came from the SOS’s ENR CSV tool—not county tabulation systems.
The defect affects any contest with precinct splits, and only the Secretary of State can correct it.
Election confidence hinges on accurate public reporting. “It’s not just a data error,” Schleiker said. “It’s the optics. It’s the trust.”
Schleiker has also pushed back on the state’s “gold standard” branding. “You will never hear Steve Schleiker say that,” he said. “When you say you’re the gold standard, you’re basically saying you’re perfect—and, honestly, perfection is elusive. Nothing is ever perfect.”
RMV requested comment
Rocky Mountain Voice sent detailed questions to six email addresses at the Secretary of State’s office about the ENR CSV defect, including whether it affected any Nov. 4 results, when the office first learned of the problem and whether counties should expect a corrective fix. As of publication, the Secretary of State’s office has not responded.
A pattern Colorado can no longer ignore
Colorado teaches elementary students to show their math so a teacher can walk them through where their thinking went wrong and help them correct it. But when discrepancies appear in the state’s reporting system, the Secretary of State did not provide that same level of transparency.
Instead of explaining the error in public view, the office removed the data and declined to answer questions in the county where the problem was discovered.
When Colorado’s voter information contains discrepancies, the responsibility to address them transparently belongs to the state’s chief election official. Clerks can prove every ballot they count, but they cannot repair statewide reporting tools. And it just makes it that more difficult to rebuild trust after a state-level failure.
The ENR CSV breakdown reveals a broader issue within the state’s reporting system. Whether the Secretary of State fully addresses the defect will determine whether this trust gap continues to widen or whether voters receive the clarity they expect from the office that oversees their elections.
While the state seemingly won’t go on the record about the issue—Schleiker said he’s willing to speak directly with anyone who wants to understand what his office found.
Schleiker can be reached at 719-520-7306 or [email protected].
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