Will Jena fail upward again?
I well remember how I felt when Jena Griswold got her second term as Secretary of State. She ran against a Republican who, though eminently qualified not to mention competent, was about as plain-Jane as they come. She was boring. Oh, and she said all the right things for Trump-avoidant voters about elections and voting machines.
And yet, Jena won handily.
When I woke to those election results I kept asking myself how Jena continues to fail upwards. It is a mystery to me. I get party line voting, something many engage in and parties depend on, but even at that how does Jena Griswold survive primaries and contests with people who are obviously better?
I read the story linked below about Griswold recently which brought that question up to the surface again.
The story details how the Secretary of State's Office (again) messed up something online, revealing information that it shouldn't have, this time confidential voter information instead of passwords. Oh, and the information about the voters was up for a couple weeks.
Let me pause there if you're not familiar. A confidential voter is someone whose personal information** like address, etc. is hidden for some safety reason. It might be a policewoman or a judge (or anyone who has a legitimate need for protecting their information due to safety concerns).
The Secretary's Office accidentally made public the information of an estimated 130K confidential voters, and they know that 59 of those profiles were accessed in the about two week period that the information was visible.
To her credit, Griswold did accept responsibility and has sought to fix the issue. A couple quotes from the article flesh this out:
"The [Secretary of State's] department contacted 54 of the affected voters directly and mailed letters to the remaining five. Griswold said that, based on those conversations and IP addresses, they believe the voters accessed those profiles themselves."
"Griswold took responsibility for the error and said additional safeguards are being put in place. 'Well, ultimately, it is my office, and I apologize for the error. 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,' Griswold said."
That's reasonable to expect and I'm glad to see her actually taking responsibility (after skirting and shirking on previous things). Were this a single problem in her tenure, it'd be easier to swallow, however.
It's not. There've been multiple problems in the Griswold Secretary's office, problems which thus far don't seem to disqualify her in the eyes of some voters.
Will this one be the straw that breaks the camel's back?
**Information about registered voters like name and address are actually public record and accessible upon request. More in the second link below.
https://www.denver7.com/news/local-news/colorado-secretary-of-states-website-exposed-133-000-confidential-voter-profiles-for-11-days
https://www.sos.state.co.us/pubs/elections/FAQs/VoterRegistrationData.html
Related:
Turns out (via a news break happening after the above was written) one of the victims of the data release is none other than Griswold’s Republican opponent. More in the story below.
https://www.cpr.org/2026/08/31/colorado-voter-data-breach-michael-allen-jena-griswold/
Senator Kipp gets her undies in a bunch
Per the CBS article linked first below, State senator Cathy Kipp got angry enough after an Independence Institute send up of her referred measure (this video is linked second below) that she used a new state law about AI "Deep Fakes" to file a complaint.
Quoting the article with link intact:
"State Sen. Cathy Kipp says a deepfake video of her violates Colorado law. She has filed what may be the first complaint under a state law that limits deepfakes, which use artificial intelligence to generate fake images of a person that look and sound real."
I wonder if prior to filing the complaint Kipp bothered to go and look up the definition of satire, our country's long history with and legal protection of same.
I'll leave it to you to read the article and see Jon Caldara's (of the Independence Institute) response to the complaint. I want to end here by noting something (see also "Related" below) you won't see in the article.
Amid all the deep fakes along with Kipp's statement about her filing the complaint (also in the article), she neglects to touch on how Independence Institute's (and others') characterization of Prop NN is wrong and why.
Senator Kipp complains about AI, but stays mum on the real point of the video: Prop NN is the government reaching (yet again) into your pocket. Senator Kipp wants to take from you and give to others.
https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/deepfake-video-colorado-state-lawmaker-complaint/
Related:
A Gazette Editorial Board take on Kipp's use of the new AI law. Worth a read, but the title made me laugh so I'll quote it:
"The real ‘deepfake’ is Proposition NN"
https://www.denvergazette.com/2026/08/26/editorial-the-real-deepfake-is-proposition-nn/
The voice in video doesn’t even remotely sound like Kipp. In fact, it sounds orders of magnitude better than Kipp’s annoying tyrannical whiny voice.
If someone is falling for this, that’s on them.
If II were smart, they’d sell t-shirts with a still of that video printed on them along with a “greatest hits” list on the back of all the rights-violating bills that evil cretan wrote and passed.
Wow! Didn't know you did humor, too! 😂🤡😂🤡