Just hours after a third party investigation found the Secretary of State’s Office “unintentionally” violated policy in posting a spreadsheet with election equipment passwords, Democrats on the Colorado General Assembly’s Legislative Audit Committee rejected calls for an audit of that breach.

The committee is evenly between Democrats and Republicans; hence, the potential for a tie vote.

And the panel killed the proposal along party lines, with Democrats balking at the request and Republicans supporting it. The committee voted, 4-4, dooming the audit request.  

It’s at least the fourth time in recent years that Democrats have quashed Republican efforts to seek audits of state agencies or officials.

The request for an audit came from Rep. Lisa Frizell, R-Castle Rock, who is the committee’s chair.

Sen. Rod Pelton, R-Cheyenne Wells, said the county clerks in the 13 counties in his district “have some distrust in the Secretary of State’s office” and that an audit would help improve that relationship.

The audit committee began meeting Monday at 9 a.m., roughly 15 minutes after the Secretary of State’s office released the results of a third-party investigation into the security breach that led to the public release of election equipment passwords. That report made seven recommendations for improvements in how the office should handle that information.

While she hadn’t seen the report, Frizell said she believes lawmakers owed it to the state’s citizens to ensure an independent review of the matter.

Vice-chair Rep. Andrew Boesenecker, D-Fort Collins,, noted that the Secretary of State’s office had agreed to the third party investigator’s recommendations and that the Denver District Attorney’s office is also investigating the issue.

Sen. Kevin Van Winkle, R-Highlands Ranch, responded that the information from the third party probe and the Denver District Attorney’s investigation could be considered in a legislative audit.

This is the second time Democrats have prevented from proceeding an audit tied to Colorado’s secretary of state. The last time occurred in 2020, when the legislative audit chair, then-Rep. Lori Saine, R-Firestone, asked for an audit on election integrity barely a month after the 2020 election.

Democrats also blocked an audit of former Gov. John Hickenlooper’s legal expenses tied to two ethics complaints filed in 2019. Among the most vocal opponents of that request was committee member Sen. Rhonda Fields, D-Aurora, whose daughter, Moisha, was political director for the Hickenlooper U.S. Senate campaign.

Editor’s note: Story corrected to correctly identify Boesenecker.