News Scrap

Colorado election officials uncovered a scheme in which more than a dozen mailed ballots were stolen and used to cast fraudulent votes before the real voters ever received them. According to Secretary of State Jena Griswold, the fraud was discovered on the Western Slope during routine signature verification checks.

“The ballots were filled out, signed, and returned through a USPS mailbox—not a ballot drop box,” Griswold said. “Four ballots passed the initial signature verification, and three voters had already been contacted by the Mesa County Clerk.”

One of the affected voters was notified through the BallotTrax system that their ballot had been received, though they had not yet voted. The issue prompted Mesa County Clerk Bobbie Gross to investigate, eventually finding that several ballots had been signed by the same person and sent close together. The case has since been turned over to the 21st Judicial District Attorney for a criminal investigation.

The U.S. Postal Service is also looking into how the ballots were intercepted.

Griswold reassured voters that the state’s election system is secure, saying, “This attempt at fraud was caught quickly thanks to the tools we have in place.” Colorado uses signature verification and BallotTrax to make sure elections are both accessible and secure.

This case comes not long after former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters was sentenced for her role in spreading false claims about the 2020 election results.