On November 8, 2024, Kim Monson explores critical election security concerns in a rebroadcast of her November 4th pre-election show. With Election Day looming, the program examines the Colorado Secretary of State’s BIOS password breach, signature verification vulnerabilities in mail-in ballots, the Libertarian Party’s lawsuit demanding hand-counted paper ballots, and a Denver ballot measure threatening to close an employee-owned lamb processing plant.
Property Rights and the Attack on Colorado Agriculture
Start listening at 16:37 – Hour 1
Bonnie Brown, Executive Director of the Colorado Wool Growers Association, exposes the deceptive tactics behind Denver’s Ballot Initiative 309. The measure, pushed by Pro Animal Future activists, seeks to close Superior Farms, a lamb processing plant employing 160 workers who have repeatedly stated they value their jobs. Brown reveals that the organization’s so-called whistleblower never actually worked for Superior Farms, having been employed at a different facility in the 1980s, before Superior even purchased the plant in 1996.
The initiative represents a broader assault on livestock production, Brown warns, with the lamb industry serving as a testing ground before activists target beef producers. Temple Grandin, the world-renowned livestock handling expert, reviewed undercover footage and found no violations. Brown emphasizes that sheep grazing provides environmental benefits including weed control, wildfire prevention through fuel load reduction, and carbon sequestration.
“309 is a solution in search of a problem. And since the problem doesn’t exist, Pro Animal Future has fabricated one to prop up their ban, which their end game is to stop livestock production in the United States.”
Bonnie Brown, Executive Director, Colorado Wool Growers Association
The Fragile Foundation of Mail-in Ballot Security
Start listening at 32:09 – Hour 1
Robert Cooper sounds the alarm on signature verification, the sole method validating voter identity in Colorado’s mail-in voting system. Cooper explains that once a signature is verified and the envelope opened, votes cannot be pulled back, making the process critically important. Yet no audit standards exist for this verification, and significant variance in rejection rates across counties, ranging from 0.6 percent to 2.2 percent, suggests inconsistent application of standards.
Cooper points to Mesa County, where investigators identified 12 fraudulent ballots but signature verification caught only 9, missing 3 that were counted. The signature judges receive approximately two hours of training, while forensic certification for court testimony typically requires two to three years. Financial institutions abandoned signature-only verification decades ago due to unreliability, yet Colorado’s entire mail-in voting system depends on it.
“The public needs to understand that the entire voter ID verification of a mail-in voting system is based on signature verification, and banks don’t use that as the only source.”
Robert Cooper, Election Integrity Researcher
Voting Machine Vulnerabilities and the BIOS Password Crisis
Start listening at 69:12 – Hour 2
Retired Air Force Colonel Shawn Smith, a technology expert with Cause of America, explains why the BIOS password breach represents a severe security failure. Secretary of State Jenna Griswold’s claim that two passwords protect the systems is misleading, Smith argues, as having the BIOS password enables attackers to bypass Windows security, alter boot sequences, install malware, or even modify the BIOS itself to display false status information.
Smith details how voting system computers, manufactured overseas with components from China, lack proper audit trails. The systems have been configured to overwrite log files when memory fills, the only configuration option prohibited under voting system standards. Governor Polis’s rapid deployment of IT staff to verify security amounts to theater, Smith contends, as proper forensic evaluation would require days per component by highly qualified specialists, plus access to audit records that simply do not exist.
“If you have to hand count to know what’s true, and you do, then you might as well just hand count, because doing anything else is just sort of wasting your time and money and maybe keeping you from doing the hand count which can be relied upon.”
Shawn Smith, Retired Air Force Colonel, Cause of America
Libertarian Party Demands Hand Count Following Security Breach
Start listening at 100:34 – Hour 2
Hannah Goodman, Chair of the Colorado Libertarian Party, and Congressional candidate James Wiley explain their lawsuit against Secretary of State Griswold. Filed in response to the BIOS password breach that exposed voting equipment for over four months, the lawsuit demands decommissioning of compromised machines and a transition to hand-counted paper ballots.
Wiley notes this mirrors the remedy applied to Mesa County’s 41 machines after a previous breach. The party argues that whether or not passwords were changed, the systems’ logs remain unverified and Wi-Fi settings unconfirmed, leaving machines potentially compromised. Goodman emphasizes that fair elections require bipartisan oversight, which the Secretary of State’s office has failed to provide in its scramble to address the breach.
“Those machines are entirely compromised. Whether or not the BIOS passwords were changed, and Secretary Griswold claims that they have been across the state, the logs of those computers have not been verified.”
James Wiley, Libertarian Congressional Candidate
