Are They Idiots or Corrupt?

 My son-in-law says, "Never ascribe to malice what might be explained by idiocy."  This first one might fit that category.  10/25/24 GoErie:

"Not every mistake is nefarious."

That's the message the Democracy Defense Project, which includes former Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell and former Republican U.S. Reps. Jim Gerlach and Melissa Hart, is telling voters concerned about a printing mishap that led to nearly 300 Erie County voters being mailed both their own mail ballot, and the mail ballot of another voter.

“We were concerned to learn that nearly 300 Erie County voters received duplicate mail-in ballots," the group said in a statement Thursday. "This is an issue that must be corrected quickly, and we are confident that the Erie County Board of Elections is doing just that.

Maybe not nefarious but certainly it can have nefarious results.  This next one could be idiocy but why would you create a spreadsheet with such private information, then hide the tab, before putting it online?  10/29/24 9News:

DENVER — The Colorado Secretary of State’s Office inadvertently posted a spreadsheet to its website with a hidden tab that included voting system passwords.

In a statement to 9NEWS, a spokesperson for the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office said that “the Department is working to remedy this situation where necessary.”

“The Department took immediate action as soon as it was aware of this and informed the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which closely monitors and protects the county’s essential security infrastructure,” the spokesperson said.

On Tuesday morning, Colorado Republican Party Vice Chair Hope Scheppelman shared the hidden tab discovery in a mass email, along with an affidavit from someone who claims they had downloaded the Excel file from the Colorado Secretary of State’s website and discovered the hidden tab by simply clicking “unhide.” The name on the affidavit was blacked out in the Republican Party email.

9NEWS left a voicemail with Scheppelman on Tuesday afternoon.

The passwords that were in the hidden tab are known as BIOS passwords and are one part of the security process for Colorado’s voting machines.

They are passwords needed to configure system settings.

“There are two unique passwords for every election equipment component, which are kept in separate places and held by different parties. Passwords can only be used with physical in-person access to a voting system,” a spokesperson for the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office said.

"To be very clear, we do not see this as a full security threat to the state. This is not a security threat," Colorado's Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold told 9NEWS Tuesday. "There are two passwords to get into any voting component, along with physical access. We have layers of security, and out of just an abundance of caution, have staff in the field changing passwords, looking at access logs and looking at the entire situation and continuing our investigation."