Secretary Of State Issues Elbert County Clerk Subpoena Amid Possible Election Security Breach
ELBERT COUNTY, Colo. (CBS4) - A second county clerk is under investigation by the Colorado Secretary of State's office over a possible security breach involving election equipment.
Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters was accused last year of making a copy of her county's voting system hard drive.
Now, Elbert County Clerk Dallas Schroeder has admitted to doing the same thing in an affidavit.
The hard drive includes information like passwords and system software, which hackers could use to interfere with elections. Schroeder signed an affidavit admitting that he "made a forensic image of everything on the election server and saved the image to a secure external hard drive that is kept under lock and key in the Elbert County elections office."
He says the Secretary of State's office told him to make the copy before an update to the system's software in August of last year. Schroeder and other Republicans are suing the Secretary of State's office, claiming voting equipment wasn't properly certified and records were destroyed in 2020.
Secretary of State Jena Griswold calls the allegations "debunked conspiracy theories."
She says Schroeder's copy of the hard drive represents a potential breach of security protocols.
"Clerks are required to take copies of election records that includes information about the election, ballots cast, information like that. That is not what he copied. He copied the hard drive," she said.
Griswold says Schroeder has ignored her requests for more information.
"We had hoped that this would resolve with simple conversation. It has not. So, I'm going to take appropriate steps to make sure we understand what happened and that we remediate any security issues that there was or is in Elbert County."
Griswold issued a subpoena Monday for Schroeder to appear at a deposition for questioning.
At this point, she says, there is no evidence that the copy posed a risk to last year's election. It appears to have been made before the system was updated.
Schroeder has not responded to CBS4's request for comment.