The Colorado Secretary of State’s office accidentally released some online voting machine passwords before Election Day, prompting some social media users to vilify the office’s elected leader, Jena Griswold.

“The lady who leaked Colorado voting system passwords is the same person who tried to get Trump off the ballot,” the X Libs of TikTok account posted on Oct. 30 with Griswold’s photo.

An Instagram user shared a screenshot of the post and was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat fake news and misinformation in its news feed. (Read more about our partnership with Metawhich owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads.)

The social media posts exaggerate the details of what happened and make it appear as if Griswold personally or maliciously leaked information that compromised the election process. That’s not what happened. And Griswold did not file the lawsuit that sought to remove former President Donald Trump from Colorado’s 2023 primary ballot; was charged in the case.

Griswold said Colorado Public Radio on Oct. 30 that an employee who no longer works for the department accidentally posted a spreadsheet on the Colorado Secretary of State’s website that contained a tab of Colorado voting machine passwords. She added that secretaries of state do not have access to voting machine passwords.

The passwords were removed on Oct. 24 after being publicly available for several months, Griswold said KUSA-TV, an NBC affiliate in Denver. Each voting machine requires two passwords, and the spreadsheet contained one of the two, Griswald said.

A team updates compromised passwords, Axios reported. In addition to the two passwords, the voting machines require security clearance to be accessed.

Libs by TikTok, which PolitiFact has previous fact checkedsaid Griswold is “the same person who tried to get Trump off the ballot.” That’s not right either.

In September 2023, six Colorado voters sued Griswold and asked him to remove Trump from the Colorado presidential primary for his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The voters cited the 14th Amendment’s insurrection clause as grounds for their lawsuit.

Griswold “was a defendant in this lawsuit and did nothing to initiate it,” Jack Todd, a spokesman for the secretary of state, told PolitiFact.

The Supreme Court of Colorado, for the plaintiffs, decided Trump should be removed from the state’s primary ballot for his involvement in the January 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol riot, but the U.S. Supreme Court later canceled that decision.

Griswold did not take a position on the lawsuit before the state court ruling, saying the decision whether Trump will be disqualified “must be decided by a court, not by the public opinion of the nation.”

When the case reached the US Supreme Court, Griswold said Trump should be kept off the Colorado vote.

“Colorado should be able to ban oath-breaking insurrections from our ballot,” Griswold posted on Xsaying she was “disappointed” by the US Supreme Court decision.

Our decision

Libs of TikTok X’s post said: “The lady who leaked Colorado voting system passwords is the same person who tried to remove Trump from the ballot.”

Griswold did not personally release the passwords to the voting machine in Colorado. Some were compromised after an employee, who no longer works for the department, accidentally posted a spreadsheet with a tab containing passwords online.

Separately, Griswold was a defendant in the lawsuit to remove Trump from the Colorado presidential primary vote last year and did not initiate the effort. She supported it when it was challenged in the US Supreme Court.

The statement contains an element of truth—someone in Griswold’s office accidentally posted partial voting machine passwords online—but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. We rate the statement Mostly False. ​