The Colorado Secretary of State’s Office made information for more than 130,000 confidential voters publicly accessible for over a week because of an error in updating a voter registration tool, agency officials said Thursday.
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Agency staff confirmed that 59 voter profiles for people who had requested that their records not be publicly disclosed were accessed between Aug. 14 and late Tuesday afternoon, when the problem was discovered.
Department officials believe many, but not all, of those searches were likely people accessing their own information, department spokesperson Jack Todd said, based on the IP addresses used, talking to affected voters and the information required to search the database.
Colorado has 133,449 active confidential voters who have opted to be left out of such records.
The error happened when department staff updated the “Find my voter registration” tool to comply with new state requirements to allow preregistered voters, who are at least 17 years and six months old and eligible to vote later this year, to check their voter registrations online, agency officials said in a news release.
In a statement, Secretary of State Jena Griswold said her office took the confidentiality of every voter’s data extremely seriously.
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“I sincerely regret that this happened. My staff identified this issue, and we immediately fixed it and are continuing outreach to affected voters,” said Griswold, who is the Democratic nominee for Colorado attorney general in the November election.
After finding the error, the secretary of state’s office said it reversed the update, identified which confidential voters had been searched and reached out to those whose information was compromised.
Department officials will start using new automated and manual tests to make sure confidential voter information is not made publicly accessible in the future, the office said.
This is not the first time Griswold has dealt with a data breach. In 2024, office staff posted online a spreadsheet with partial passwords to parts of the state’s voting systems.
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