Gov. Jared Polis and Secretary of State Jena Griswold on Friday said voting machine passwords, which were posted online, have been updated and the security of the equipment has been verified.

The two Democratic officials said that work was completed on Thursday evening, the day after Donald Trump’s presidential campaign demanded that Griswold’s office take immediate action to halt ballot processing in order to secure the state’s election equipment.

“All of the passwords in affected counties have been changed. I want to thank Governor Polis for deploying extra state resources to help in this effort,” Griswold said in a statement. “Colorado has countless layers of security to ensure our elections are free and fair, and every eligible voter should know their ballot will be counted as cast.”

“We appreciate the swift work to update these passwords. Every Coloradan can rest assured that their vote will be counted fairly and accurately. While the leaked passwords compromised just one of many layers of security that protect our election integrity in Colorado, we knew it was critical to take swift action and to work with Secretary Griswold and the county clerks to update the passwords immediately,” Polis added in the same statement. “I want to especially thank the hardworking state employees and county clerk personnel who were part of this effort.”

In their joint statement, Polis and Griswold said the operation included eight staffers from the Department of State and another 22 state cybersecurity personnel directed to help by the governor’s office. 

Both officials insisted that the password disclosure “did not pose a security threat to Colorado’s elections” and that it will not affect how ballots are counted.

On Thursday, a Republican lawmaker called for the state’s bipartisan Legislative Audit Committee to convene an emergency meeting to investigate the password leak, saying the response by Griswold, a Democrat, “so far raises more concerns than it resolves.”

Also on Thursday, the state’s county clerks sought to reassure Colorado voters that the election system remains secure, noting that the leaked passwords are just one element of a layered security system that protects voting equipment and ballot processing.

Griswold had acknowledged that a spreadsheet posted online for months to the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office website “improperly included” passwords to some components of the state’s election system. Her announcement came on the heels of a release issued earlier in the day by the Colorado Republican Party that said that, until last week, the spreadsheet included a hidden tab that could be toggled to display the passwords.

Former Republicans Secretary of State Scott Gessler, an attorney for the Trump campaign, however, contended in a letter sent to Griswold on Wednesday that the password leak “undermines the integrity of our elections” and could violate state law.

Gessler demanded that Griswold identify which counties were affected by the password leak and then direct them to halt ballot processing in order to re-secure and test the machines before re-scanning the ballots that have already been processed.

“We recognize these steps may be an inconvenience for your office and for the affected counties,” Gessler wrote. “But this inconvenience is necessary because it is the only way to guarantee that the elections equipment in those counties whose current BIOS passwords were disclosed by your office are secure and that the chain of custody for that equipment required by Colorado law and regulations is unbroken.”

In a letter sent late Thursday to Gessler and Colorado Republican Party Chairman Dave Williams, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Beall said that after learning that the passwords had been posted online, the department had consulted with federal cybersecurity experts and “quickly determined that the spreadsheet presented no immediate threat to the security of Colorado’s voting systems or the 2024 General Election.”

Out of “an abundance of caution,” Beall added, the Secretary of State’s Office was working with county clerks to update passwords and “(perform) additional security checks to confirm that no machines have been altered.”

Editor’s note: This is a developing story.