GRAND JUNCTION, Colorado (KKCO/Gray News) – Two women now imprisoned in Colorado are accused of stealing ballots, altering them and then fraudulently submitting them for counting.

Sally Jane Smith, 59, and Vicki Lyn Stuart, a 64-year-old mail carrier, are charged with identity theft, attempting to influence a public servant and forgery for their roles in an alleged scheme to ‘test’ the mail signature system. voting for ballots used in the election,” according to the arrest affidavit.

Their goal, according to the affidavit, was to see if the verification process would detect forged signatures.

The documents state that voters are still being traced and confirmed, but there may be 20 or more victims of the alleged scheme.

The two suspects were located because several of the supposedly falsified ballots fell on the same mail delivery route; It was a route confirmed to be temporarily assigned to Stuart, the postman.

The documents also indicated that Stuart was interviewed by the district attorney’s lead investigator, Rob Heil. He said Stuart was the person who allegedly delivered the ballots on that route.

Investigators also discovered that Stuart’s GPS location showed her at the homes of known victims on October 12, the day the affected ballots were supposed to be delivered.

Smith’s fingerprints were also allegedly found on a Colorado Bureau of Investigation ticket; It was a ballot she would not normally have access to, as investigators discovered she was never employed by the United States Postal Service or the Mesa County Elections Department.

Arrest documents indicate that police eventually contacted Smith at his home.

During an interview with investigators, Smith allegedly admitted that he filled out ballots that were not his. Initially, she claimed the ballots were provided to her by a man who worked at the Colorado Bureau of Investigation that she “randomly met in a parking lot,” according to the affidavit. She also claimed that the man asked her to help her test the voting system, to which Smith responded by filling out the ballots in his truck and returning them to the man.

“(Smith) even hand-drew a map of where she met the CBI man at Mesa Mall and (she) pointed out where he parked,” according to the affidavit.

However, Smith eventually admitted to officials that she knew Stuart and that she was not being completely honest with the investigator; The documents said he was trying to protect Stuart.

The affidavit states that Smith later admitted to the investigator that he obtained the ballots from Stuart right around the time the ballots began arriving in Grand Junction mailboxes.

Stuart was contacted by police around 7:30 a.m. Wednesday and reportedly said something along the lines of: “Do you want to put me in jail just because I mishandled a piece of mail?”

Bobbie Gross, Mesa County Clerk and Recorder, issued a statement regarding the investigation. It said, in part:

“Mesa County election officials recently identified and successfully prevented fraudulent mail-in voting attempts through our signature verification process. We immediately reported this to the 21st Prosecutor’s Office of the Judicial District, which led to two arrests today.

“I am deeply grateful for the diligence and thorough efforts of the District Attorney’s Office in addressing this matter. “I am proud that our security measures are effective and we will remain vigilant to safeguard the integrity of our elections.”

Stuart and Smith were booked into the Mesa County Detention Center.

The link has not yet been established for either woman.

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