We’re now at three Republican county clerks in Colorado who are facing questions over allegedly unauthorized copies of election system data.
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold (D) sent Douglas County Clerk and Recorder Merlin Klotz an election order on Thursday directing him to turn over documents and answer questions in writing in connection to a Telegram post attributed to him from last fall. The social media post indicated a “full image backup of our server” had been taken before a trusted build was done. The post also mentioned reaching out to MyPillow CEO-turned-election truther Mike Lindell with concerns about Dominion Voting Systems.
According to Griswold, Klotz didn’t respond to her office’s information request last Friday about the Telegram post after it was discovered.
The questions in the seven-page order, which included a copy of the Telegram post, zero in on what Klotz did or didn’t know about the “image backup,” how the image could have been made and how many copies there were, who had access to the voter system and what connections, if any, Klotz has with Lindell.
The order also demanded that Klotz turn on 24/7 video surveillance of the voting equipment. Additionally, Griswold said, Klotz now has to be “accompanied at all times by a person authorized to have access to the voting system” whenever he wants to enter a room with voting equipment.
Griswold gave Klotz a deadline of Feb. 10 to respond to her order.
“Failure to comply with any part of this order may result in further action from my office,” she wrote.
The secretary of state’s office is already investigating two other Republican county clerks in Colorado for potential security breaches with voting systems: Tina Peters of Mesa County and Dallas Schroeder of Elbert County.
Griswold alleges that Peters gave an unauthorized person access to her county’s voting equipment that led to sensitive election material getting leaked by a QAnon conspiracy theorist. Peters was banned from running her county’s elections last year as a result of the allegations.
In a written response to Griswold’s inquiry last week, Schroeder admitted to making copies of two of his county’s Dominion voting equipment hard drives, giving a copy to his private lawyer and being given instructions from non-election staffers on how to make the copies.
Klotz and Schroeder, plus a Republican state representative, sued Griswold last fall accusing her office of using improper software in the 2020 election and alleging her office destroyed election records.
Read Griswold’s order below:
