The two friends in Mesa County reportedly had a plan to pressure test Colorado’s mail ballot system to see whether anyone was really checking the signatures.
According to authorities, one was a U.S. Postal Service employee in Grand Junction with access to ballots that were mailed by the millions across the state in October. The other woman was her friend, officials said, who went all in to fraudulently fill out ballots that didn’t belong to her and send them to the clerk’s office.
The two women, Sally Jane Smith, 59, and her friend, the postal employee, Vicki Stuart, 64, were arrested in Grand Junction on Wednesday for stealing mail ballots and fraudulently casting them before their intended recipients were able to vote.
Prosecutors say there were roughly 20 victims — people whose ballots didn’t reach their homes on Oct. 12.
Police were initially called when a few of those people received emails from the ballot tracing system verifying they had voted, when they hadn’t even received their ballots. Investigators quickly determined that all of the victims all lived close to one another in a few subdivisions, according to the arrest affidavit made public Wednesday.
Stuart, who was the mail carrier for the area on Oct. 12, initially told authorities she didn’t deliver all of the ballots at a subdivision mailbox cluster because some of the names on the ballots didn’t match the names taped on the mailboxes where she was delivering them.
Stuart’s boss at the postal service told authorities that even though that wasn’t the proper policy for mail delivery, Stuart brought them back to the USPS Annex.
Stuart told investigators initially that she thought she returned about 20 ballots to the main hub, and she denied any involvement in the ballot thefts. She also denied giving any of the undelivered ballots to anyone else who may have completed them, authorities said.
Investigators from the Mesa County District Attorney’s Office captured a number of ballots that had not been removed from their envelopes. Law enforcement officials say the paper ballots inside are suitable for fingerprinting, since they are generally protected from the outside by an envelope.
Prints on those ballots were connected back to Smith, who had prior felony convictions, police said.
When investigators first visited Smith at her home, she admitted she falsely completed ballots that didn’t belong to her. She also told law enforcement that she was given the ballots by a man who worked at the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. She said they “randomly” met in a parking lot.
Eventually, she admitted that wasn’t truthful and acknowledged she had a friend who worked at the postal service named Vicki Stuart and it was Stuart who furnished her the ballots, the affidavit said.
She told authorities the two hatched a scheme in October to “test” the signature verification system to see whether they would get caught if the signatures didn’t match.
Secretary of State Jena Griswold told reporters that three ballots were removed from their envelopes and were counted as legitimate votes when they shouldn’t have been. Victims were given new ballots. Griswold noted before the election it was proof that the signature verification system worked.
Mesa County authorities on Wednesday declined to comment further, including how the women fraudulently voted or whether there was a pattern.
Both women were charged with two felonies, identity theft and attempting to influence a public servant. They were also charged with forgery.
