Polis activates small Colorado National Guard cyber team for primary election security
A June 16 executive order activates four to six unarmed Colorado National Guard cyber members to assist the secretary of state through the June 30 primary.
Gov. Jared Polis on June 16 ordered the activation of four to six unarmed members of the Colorado National Guard Task Force Cyber to help defend Colorado election systems through the June 30 primary.
The deployment begins June 16 and can last up to 30 days under Executive Order D 2026 008. The order says Secretary of State Jena Griswold requested the support June 9.
Under the order, the Guard members will support the secretary of state with election cybersecurity defense efforts and training tied to the primary. The order says Colorado’s online voter registration systems have security features but could still provide a pathway for cyber actors to unlawfully access voter registration databases and expose voters’ personally identifiable information.
The order says such an intrusion could undermine public confidence and discourage voter registration, but “does not threaten the integrity of our State elections.” Publicly available records reviewed for this story do not identify a specific active breach, named adversary or other defined incident behind the activation.
The public record also leaves key scope questions unanswered. The order does not name any counties, county clerks or local election offices that will directly receive Guard support, and it does not specify which systems beyond the state’s online voter registration systems and broader critical election infrastructure will be covered.
The step is not without precedent. In a 2025 executive order for the coordinated election, Polis similarly activated four to six Guard cyber members to assist with election cybersecurity defense efforts. A Colorado National Guard account of an earlier election deployment said Guard cyber soldiers provided network monitoring and support to the secretary of state and the Office of Information Technology before and during that election, and a 2022 governor’s office release said similar assistance had been used in previous elections.
Even so, the June 16 order is a new statewide security step ahead of this month’s primary. No official 2026 public statement reviewed for this story provided a cost estimate, said whether counties will be billed, or explained whether this year’s Guard mission differs in scope from prior election deployments.
The order expires 30 days after June 16 unless Polis extends it.