EL PASO COUNTY, Colo. (KOAA) — 4th Judicial District Attorney Michael Allen, who represents El Paso and Teller counties, claimed his information was among 59 confidential voters accessed after information was wrongly made public earlier this month.
The Colorado Secretary of State's office announced last week, an update to the state's "Find My Voter Registration" site made 133,000 confidential voters information public, 59 of those were accessed by someone. The voter details include full name, birth year, voter ID, registration status, party affiliation, and residential address.
Allen is running against Secretary of State Jena Griswold this November as they both seek to become Colorado's next Attorney General. Current Attorney General Phil Weiser is term limited and is the democratic nominee for the Governor's office.
Allen said he learned his information was accessed on Aug. 27. He said the call brought up a lot of questions and few answers, "certainly no answers that would give you any sort of peace of mind as to what the motives were behind whoever it was that accessed these these profiles, so mostly a lot of questions," Allen said.
Allen said he had identifed eight people in El Paso and Teller counties as having their voter details accessed. He has also assigned two investigators to look into the information released, "we want to make sure that the people in this district, in the fourth judicial district, are not victims of crime. So the good thing is is that the eight people, if you take me out of it, none of them were identified as victims of crime," Allen said in response to a question about what he hoped the outcome of the investigation would be.
"Ultimately, the people that will hold her accountable are the citizens of this state. I think we need to have a full audit, an investigatory audit done of this situation and those findings made public," Allen said.
The Colorado Secretary of State's office said it cannot confirm specifics of voters impacted.
"The Department takes the confidentiality of each and every voter's data extremely seriously and regrets that this happened. The Department addressed the issue as soon as we were aware of it, and has reached out to every impacted voter," the Secretary of State's office said in a statement to News5.
The Sec. of State's office added it is working with Colorado State Patrol to ensure any information released is examined and addressed.
Griswold admitted to the error last week, she told Scripps News Group Denver "this should not have happened at this point, we have various steps in place to avoid system changes from going wrong after coders update any of our infrastructure; there's quality assurance and then another check. And unfortunately, though that was not enough, so we are taking additional steps, including automated quality assurance".
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