The two friends from Mesa County had a plan to test Colorado’s vote-by-mail system to see if anyone was actually verifying the signatures.

According to authorities, one was a Postal Service employee in Grand Junction with access to ballots that were mailed to millions of people across the state in October. The other woman was her friend, officials said, who went out of her way 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, postal worker Vicki Stuart, 64, were arrested Wednesday in Grand Junction for stealing mail-in ballots and -fraudulently discarded before their recipients could vote.

Prosecutors say there were about 20 victims – people whose ballots did not arrive at home on October 12.

The police were initially called when some of these people received emails from the ballot tracking system verifying that they had voted, when they had not even received their ballots. Investigators quickly determined that all the victims lived close to each other in several subdivisions, according to the arrest affidavit released Wednesday.

Stuart, who was the postal carrier for the area on Oct. 12, initially told authorities that he did not deliver all the ballots to a group of subdivision mailboxes because some of the names on the ballots did not match the names on the boxes postage. where he delivers them.

Stuart’s boss at the Postal Service told authorities that while this was not the proper policy for delivering the mail, Stuart brought it back to the USPS Annex.

Stuart initially told investigators he believed he returned about 20 ballots to the main center and denied any involvement in the ballot thefts. She also denied giving any of the undelivered ballots to anyone else who could have filled them out, authorities said.

Mesa County Prosecutor’s Office investigators seized a number of ballots that had not been removed from the envelopes. Law enforcement officials say the ballots inside are suitable for fingerprinting because they are generally protected from the outside by an envelope.

Fingerprints on those ballots were linked to Smith, who had prior felony convictions, police said.

When investigators first visited Smith at her home, she admitted to falsely filling out ballots that did not belong to her. She also told law enforcement that she was given the ballots by a man who worked for the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. She said they met “randomly” in a parking lot.

She eventually admitted it wasn’t true and admitted she had a friend who worked at the postal service named Vicki Stuart and that Stuart was the one who provided her with the ballots, the affidavit said.

She told authorities the pair hatched a scheme in October to “test” the signature verification system to see if they would be caught if the signatures didn’t match.

Secretary of State Jena Griswold told reporters that three ballots were removed from envelopes and counted as legitimate votes when they should not have been. The victims were given new ballots. Griswold noted before the election that it was proof that the signature verification system worked.

Mesa County officials declined to comment further Wednesday, including on 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 official. They were also accused of forgery.