Denver District Attorney Beth McCann has decided against pursuing criminal charges over the breach in election equipment passwords by the Secretary of State’s Office.

McCann said her decision was the result of a seven-week investigation into whether the office of Jena Griswold violated the statutes dealing with the publication of passwords related to a voting system and second degree official misconduct.

The investigation found that hundreds of voting equipment passwords were published “in error and not ‘knowingly,'” as part of a spreadsheet that was posted online by the Secretary of State’s Office for more than four months until its discovery just days before the November election, McCann said in a statement.

McCann added that her office found no indication that the passwords were posted online in an effort to influence the outcome of an election.

Griswold and her staff have maintained that disclosure of the passwords by themselves didn’t endanger the state’s voting system, which is protected by multiple levels of security. In addition to the passwords posted online — known as BIOS passwords, an acronym for Basic Input/Output System passwords — anyone trying to access the equipment would need another password kept by local county clerks and physical access to the equipment, which is kept in secure locations.

“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,” Griswold said after state personnel traveled to affected counties over a three-day period at the end of October to update the compromised passwords with the help of Gov. Jared Polis, who provided use of the state airplane.

Griswold earlier acknowledged that a spreadsheet posted to her office’s website “improperly included” system passwords in a hidden column that could be viewed by toggling a setting on the document. Her announcement followed a release issued by the Colorado Republican Party that exposed the breach, which affected equipment in 34 counties.

Summarizing findings in the Denver district attorney’s investigation, McCann said the mistake didn’t amount to a criminal violation under applicable laws.

“After an extensive investigation by prosecutors and investigators in my office, we have concluded that there were no criminal violations of the law regarding the publication of the voting machine passwords,” McCann said.

“Based on everything we have learned, the passwords were published in error and not ‘knowingly,’ as required to prove a violation of C.R.S. 1-13-708(2), or ‘knowingly, arbitrarily or capriciously,’ as required to prove a violation of CRS 18-8-405(1). There is no indication that the passwords were published in an effort to influence the outcome of an election.”

The prosecutor’s findings aligned with a third-party investigation into the breach performed for the Secretary of State’s Office that was released earlier this month.

That probe, performed by Baird Quinn LLC, determined that Griswold’s office failed to review the spreadsheet before posting it online but found the error was “unintentional.”

“A series of inadvertent and unforeseen events led to the public disclosure of the BIOS Passwords,” the independent investigator concluded.

While the password leak was inadvertent, the investigator added that failing to review the document for non-public information violated a state security policy and issued multiple recommendations to prevent a similar occurrence.