Do We Vote by Faith in Colorado? 

By Pamela Poll | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice

Former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters has become a national figure in the battle for transparent elections in the USA. I believe her story holds important revelations.

After the controversial 2020 election, around mid-year 2021, Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold informed County Clerks that an update of their Dominion election software called the ‘Trusted Build’ would be installed on their election server. Preserving election data for at least 22 months is required by Federal law. 

Clerk Peters arranged to have an outside person come in and create backups of the 2020 and 2021 election data. He made a second backup after the “Trusted Build” update was installed. The second backup confirmed that the 2020 and 2021 data had been erased. 

Colorado election officials claim that audit logs in computers counting votes are not part of election records required to be preserved. Audit logs document in time-stamped order events, user activities, and data modifications within systems. 

Colorado citizens vote on paper ballots but those ballots are counted by a computer tabulator. The only way to check that the votes have been counted properly by the computer is to examine the code. But the voting software companies claim their software is proprietary which prohibits cyber audits of our elections. 

We have to vote by faith that no one hacked the election. 

At the June 16, 2023 meeting of the Colorado Bipartisan Election Advisory Commission, I asked why we don’t do cyber audits of Colorado elections since that’s the only way we can know if votes were tabulated correctly. I was told “Because it’s against the law.” Then my mic was cut. 

Why on earth would this basic precaution be against the law in Colorado?

Clerk Peters gave the Mesa County election backups to several qualified cyber security professionals to analyze. They produced three reports called the Mesa County Reports that can be found here: https://tinapeters.us/reports. 

The media calls the report authors ‘grifters’. Read their bios to decide for yourself.

The reports claim the election computer system has major security vulnerabilities. 

Mesa Report One found that the voting system was not secure, was easy to hack, and did not comply with required 2002 Voting System Standards. The system also had many wireless devices installed. 

Author of Mesa Report 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.” Mesa Report Two found unauthorized software (Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio) installed on the election server. An SQL database can be hacked with simple scripts to change votes. 

Mesa Report Three claims that ballots in both 2020 and 2021 were manipulated in the server.

Tina Peters, a 70-year old Gold Star Mom, is serving a 9-year prison sentence. She is in a Colorado prison where, according to her lawyers, she has been physically attacked by other inmates. She gave Colorado citizens their first independent look inside our election computers. No election results were changed by her actions. 

The judge who sentenced her told her “prison is where we send people who are a danger to all of us.” He must believe showing evidence that raises legitimate concerns about our election process is a danger. To whom?

I wonder why Colorado elected officials would agree to a contract that makes independent cyber audits of computers that tabulate our votes off limits. U.S. Federal election laws demand absolute accuracy and transparency. 

But since 2020, Colorado legislators and election officials have made our elections less transparent. An election rule was passed in 2021 that prohibits independent third party audits of our voting systems. Then 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 passed in 2022 — after Peters had done the same. 

This law and rule deny Colorado voters the right to have our elections evaluated by independent cyber security analysts. We must totally trust the state. 

My question is simple. Why so determined to hide the code? 

Every other safeguard taken is mere theater if the computers used to count votes are not secure. The one-sided vilification of Clerk Peters by the state of Colorado and the hammer that was dropped on her with an outrageous 9-year sentence have only made me suspicious.  

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.