Between Oct. 23 when Secretary of State Jena Griswold became aware that hundreds of voting machine passwords had been released publicly on a spreadsheet and Nov. 1 when Gov. Jared Polis intervened to demand the passwords be changed, what exactly was Griswold doing to address the security breach?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Because this feels a lot like déjà vu with Jena Griswold.

In 2022 when we endorsed Griswold’s Republican opponent we wrote: “Griswold has left us unimpressed with her unwillingness to address problems and issues as they arise and even a reluctance to admit when mistakes have been made, or things could be improved.”

Here we are two years later in the midst of one of the most closely scrutinized elections of all time and Griswold’s team makes a crucial error and the secretary of state sits on it for at least a week before taking action.

We’re perplexed by the entire ordeal.

Colorado’s elections are very secure – every voter casts a paper ballot that is retained for recounts and risk-limiting audits. Those ballots are public record and can be cross-checked with the public list of participating voters to ensure the numbers add up and to ensure the voters are real, eligible, alive Coloradans.

The passwords leaked were one of two needed to access the voting machines and the machines are stored in secure areas kept under constant surveillance.

All of this means it is unlikely that any harm came from the passwords being publicly released beginning as early as Aug. 8 and ending Oct. 23.

However, it doesn’t take a conspiracy theorist to believe it’s possible the passwords weren’t leaked on accident. Did a rogue secretary of state employee – someone with delusions of grandeur on the scale of former Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters – intentionally release the passwords? Was the intent to cast a pall on the election or was he or she conspiring with someone else – Democrat or Republican — to breach election machines?

These unanswered questions are why an external investigation is needed. Griswold has said she will hire an external company to review the incident, but we think the investigation needs to be beyond her control entirely. Gov. Jared Polis has done an excellent job stepping up in Griswold’s absence on this issue and he should do so again by having the investigator spur from his office.

Peters used her role as clerk to give someone access to the voting machines in Mesa County and steal data related to the election. No real harm came from her antics and the data proved what most Coloradans already knew – the elections were secure and valid.

But that didn’t stop Peters from jetting off around the country claiming she had proof that the 2020 election was stolen.

In a similar vein, it was someone involved with discrediting the 2020 election on behalf of former President Donald Trump who first discovered the passwords in a hidden sheet on a database of election equipment that could be downloaded from the secretary of state’s website. Shawn Smith signed an affidavit that was sent to Griswold’s office on Oct. 29 stating he had downloaded the spreadsheets on Aug. 8, Oct. 16 and Oct. 23. The link to the spreadsheets was taken down on Oct. 24 when Griswold’s office noticed the passwords, but no information was released officially about the link until after Smith and the Colorado Republican Party sent out public notices about the passwords they had obtained.

Coloradans deserve to know exactly how and why the passwords were released whether it was a simple mistake, negligence or a nefarious act.

Griswold and Polis have assured Coloradans that no voting machines were compromised — the fear being of course that someone inside a county clerk’s office used the passwords, combined with theirs and their access to the machines to upload malware that could interfere with the integrity of ballot counting.

We need someone to review the security tapes and investigate just as we did following the Peters’ security breach in Mesa County. Tina Peters was sentenced to 9 years behind bars for her data breach, based in large part on the investigation into her actions led by Griswold. This security breach should be investigated just as thoroughly, as should be Griswold’s lack of response.

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When the University of Colorado announced its decision to hire Deion Sanders as its next head football coach, there was no shortage of critics. Sanders’ only college coaching experience was a three-year stop at Jackson State University. His loud, no-nonsense approach led to an unprecedented 50+ players leaving the program within his first few months on the job. And Colorado was on the hook for his five-year, $29.5 million contract — the richest contract in school history — no matter how he performed.

In fact, the move was such a risk that Colorado didn’t even have the money to pay Sanders, with the school’s athletic director telling reporters he “wasn’t worried about it” but now needed to go out and raise the money from alumni and boosters.

However, they did exactly that, and less than two years after Sanders’ introductory news conference, everything has changed. There are still critics, of course. But Sanders has taken a team that won just one game the year before his arrival and turned it into a legitimate Big 12 title contender this season.

Colorado is 6-2 on the season, making the Buffs bowl eligible for the first time in nearly a decade. The team is also ranked No. 21 in the latest AP Top 25 college football poll, and wide receiver and defensive back extraordinaire Travis Hunter is one of the favorites to win this year’s Heisman Trophy.

The combination of this success intertwined with Deion’s personality has brought the school more attention than it could have ever imagined. Colorado’s online team store sales were up 2,544% last year. The school’s social media accounts have added more than a million followers over the past two years, and the Buffaloes played in five of college football’s top 25 most-watched games last year, selling out every single home game.

This alone justifies Sanders’ five-year, $29.5 million contract — and the deal even starts to look like a bargain when you consider the downstream impact.

You’ve probably heard that athletics are the front door to a university. The idea behind that phrase is that athletic success drives everything else, with increased exposure leading to more interest, more interest leading to more applications, more applications leading to more students, more students leading to higher tuition costs and, eventually, higher academic standards and an increase in revenue for the school.

This is known as the “Flutie Effect.” It started in 1984 when Boston College quarterback Doug Flutie successfully threw a Hail Mary on national television to beat the University of Miami. Boston College then saw a 20% jump in applications over the subsequent years, and there have been countless examples since.

Butler, for instance, saw a 40% increase in applications after their men’s basketball team reached the national championship game in 2010. Applications at Florida Gulf Coast jumped 27% after advancing to the NCAA Sweet 16 as a No. 15 seed in 2013, and the University of Alabama’s enrollment increased from 25,000 to 60,000 while Nick Saban was coach.

The Flutie Effect often takes a few years to play out. However, Colorado has expedited this process by averaging 7.2 million viewers during its prime-time games last year.

As a result, the Boulder-based school received a record 68,000 applicants for fall 2024, a 20% increase from 2023. The school ended up extending offers to 51,000 students, and enrollment increased 3.4% year-over-year, from 37,153 in 2023 to 38,428 in 2024.

The typical counterargument to the Flutie Effect is that the impact is minor because schools have a limit on how many students they can accept. That’s technically true, but the problem with that thought process is that it discounts other things, like how heightened demand enables the school to raise academic standards, and, more importantly, the fact that some students are more financially valuable than others.

Take the University of Alabama, for example. Not only did enrollment increase from 25,000 students when Nick Saban arrived to 60,000 students when he retired, but the Crimson Tide have also fundamentally changed the composition of their student body.

Before Saban, the University of Alabama had three times more in-state students than out-of-state students. But today, that ratio has flipped, and Alabama’s student body now consists primarily of out-of-state students. It is an important distinction because those out-of-state students pay three times more in tuition than in-state students — $34,000 vs. $12,000 annually — which has helped Alabama collect billions in additional tuition.

Colorado still has a long way to go before it can be included in the same conversation as Alabama, but the same rules apply. Colorado’s out-of-state students pay $43,600 in tuition compared to $14,000 for in-state students. And given that the school doesn’t have the infrastructure to add an additional 20,000 students, you can almost guarantee that Colorado’s admissions staff will start placing a premium on out-of-state students.

That will eventually make Deion Sanders’ expensive contract look like one of the biggest bargains in sports. Now, the school needs to ensure Sanders doesn’t leave for a bigger program by giving him all the resources he needs to compete at the highest level.

It’s Election Day in Colorado. That means time is running out for voters to make their voices heard in the 2024 presidential election, in congressional and state legislative races, and on a bevy of statewide and local ballot measures.

The deadline to cast a vote is 7 p.m. That includes dropping off a ballot at a 24-hour drop box.

For voters still intending to vote using a ballot that was mailed to them, it’s too late to ship them back through the mail. All mail ballots must now be delivered to drop boxes or voting centers. Alternatively, voters may cast a ballot in person at voting centers that will be open across the state between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m.

The Colorado secretary of state’s website — sos.state.co.us — provides a link to a tool that allows voters to find their nearest polling locations and ballot drop boxes by inputting their addresses.

Voters can also visit their local county clerk’s website to obtain more information about where they can vote. And Colorado still allows new voter registration on Election Day in person at a county voting center.

There will be 39 voter service and polling centers open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. in Denver alone. That’s on top of dozens of drop boxes. The Denver Clerk and Recorder’s Office offers an online map of all drop box and in-person voting locations in the city on its website.