DOUGLAS COUNTY, Colo. — The third Colorado Republican county clerk questioned over a potential election machine security breach said there is no breach, simply an email he wrote with "the wrong terminology."
Republican Douglas County Clerk Merlin Klotz sent a letter explaining his email to Colorado's Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold. That email was posted to the app Telegram and brought to the attention of the Secretary of State's Office.
Griswold ordered Klotz to answer questions about the email which stated Klotz "took a full image backup of our server before a trusted build was done this year."
A trusted build is an annual process where voting equipment is updated to ensure adequate security. Griswold compared it to the type of updates that happen on a home computer. Only civil servants from the Colorado Department of State, representatives for the voting equipment provider and select county clerk employees are allowed to participate. Background checks are also required.
In his explanation to the Secretary of State, Klotz wrote: "That post was taken out of context cut and pasted from an informal private email that was never intended to be an exacting recitation of events. The email used inexact wording that was simply incorrect in a legal context. No one has made an illegal or unauthorized image of any Douglas County election data or hard drive information."
He said that per Secretary of State Election Rules, his staff "creates backups of the ClearVote election setup records containing Douglas County election data."
Each county is supposed to backup the previous year's election results.
Douglas County and Garfield County use ClearVote machines. The other 62 counties in Colorado use Dominion Voting machines.
Klotz is the third Republican county clerk in Colorado to have to answer to the Secretary of State about a potential election security breach. Two weeks ago, Republican Elbert County Clerk Dallas Schroeder admitted in written answers to Griswold that he had made two copies of his county's voting system hard drive and shared one with an outside attorney.
Last year, Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters admitted to copying her hard drive and sharing the information at a conference with conspiracy theorist and My Pillow guy Mike Lindell.
Schroeder and Klotz are both in a lawsuit against Griswold to conduct a third-party audit of the 2020 election. On Monday, the Secretary of State's Office filed a motion to have the case dismissed.
The letter from Klotz came as a result of an order by Griswold.
She gave him until Thursday to respond to a list of questions including:
- Dates and method of voting system hard drive copies
- Who was present when the hard drives were copied
- Who has access to copies
- Is Mike Lindell or anyone involved with Lindell involved
- Provide access logs for rooms containing voting system equipment since March 1
- Turn on all video surveillance 24/7
In his response, Klotz said, "While I had no input when a third party re-posted an email to a concerned voter on a social media website and attributed the posting to me, I do regret that I used the wrong terminology in trying to describe the backup process to the voter. There was no 'full image backup' and the posting to social media is incorrect. I personally do not have key card access to the restricted voting areas and I did not at any time directly or through County staff have or allow any unauthorized access to the voting equipment or data and no full image back-up was ever created or allowed."
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