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

Fifty-nine-year-old Sally Jane Smith and 64-year-old postal carrier Vicki Lyn Stuart are charged with identity theft, attempting to influence a public official and forgery for their involvement in a alleged “testing” scheme. “ballot signature system used in elections,” according to the arrest affidavit.

Their purpose, according to the affidavit, was to see if forged signatures would be caught by the verification process.

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

The two suspects were tracked down because several of the allegedly falsified ballots fell on the same mail delivery route; was a route confirmed to be temporarily assigned to Stuart the mail carrier.

The documents also said Stuart was interviewed by the District Attorney’s Office, lead investigator Rob Heil. He said Stuart was the person who would have delivered the ballots on that route.

Investigators also found that Stuart’s GPS location showed her at the homes of known victims on Oct. 12, the day the affected ballots were due.

Smith’s fingerprints were also found on a ballot by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation; it was a ballot she wouldn’t normally have access to because investigators found she was never employed by the United States Postal Service or the Mesa County Department of Elections.

Arrest documents show that law enforcement eventually contacted Smith at her home.

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

“(Smith) even hand drew a map of where she met the CBI male at Mesa Mall and (she) pointed out where (she) 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; documents indicated she was trying to protect Stuart.

The affidavit states that Smith then admitted to the investigator that he obtained the ballots from Stuart just as the ballots began arriving in Grand Junction mailboxes.

Stuart was contacted by law enforcement around 7:30 a.m. Wednesday and allegedly said something along the lines of, “You want to put me in jail just because I mishandled some mail?”

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

“Mesa County election officials recently identified and successfully prevented fraudulent vote-by-mail attempts through our signature verification process. We immediately reported this to the 21 Judicial Prosecutor’s Office, which resulted in 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 protect the integrity of our elections.”

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

Relationships have not yet been established for either woman.

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