A one-day trial over whether election machines in 34 Colorado counties should be shut down took place in Denver District Court on Monday, a day before the general election. At issue was a massive leak of hundreds of election equipment passwords,

Colorado officials said on Friday that the state’s elections are secure after a spreadsheet including a list of passwords used to access voting systems was inadvertently posted on the Secretary of State’s website.

Colorado leaders scrambled to shore up security around the state’s election voting machine system following a leak of partial passwords, deploying public safety and information technology teams to change passwords by the end of the day.

Passwords that make up part of the security system for computer equipment used in Colorado elections were published in a spreadsheet on the Secretary of State’s website. The posting of the “BIOS”

Jena Griswold, the Democrat secretary of state for Colorado, revealed that voting equipment passwords were posted online for four months before they were noticed and taken down.

The Colorado Secretary of State's Office released more information about the online password leak on Monday, the day before the election.

How secure is our election following the partial password leak from Colorado’s Secretary of State’s Office? Partial passwords for certain aspects of some voting systems were made public on the Secretary of State’s website from June 2024 to October 2024.

Yes, but state officials have said the passwords alone wouldn’t have allowed access into the state voting systems.

A week after a Colorado election breach became public, Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold revealed new details about how her office inadvertently posted voting equipment passwords online. Why it matters: The state's chief election official is doing damage control after the controversy exploded into the open and undermined trust in the state's election system.