DENVER (KDVR) — Two Mesa County residents were arrested Wednesday morning in connection with the ballots that were allegedly stolen and fraudulently sent to the Nov. 5 general election, one identified as a United States Postal Service mail carrier.

On October 24, the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office announced that at least a dozen mail-in ballots in Mesa County were intercepted and sent to the county clerk’s office without the knowledge of the voters whose ballots were used. The problem was discovered during routine signature verification as citizens reported never submitting a ballot or even receiving their ballot in the mail.

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The 21st Prosecutor’s Office launched an investigation before the matter became public on October 21. Both ballot theft suspects were arrested Wednesday morning in Mesa County, according to arrest affidavits.

Those arrested were Vicki Lyn Stuart, 64, and Sally Jane Maxedon, 59.

Stuart is charged with 16 counts of identity theft, two counts of attempting to influence a public official and 16 counts of forgery. Maxedon faces six counts of identity theft, two counts of attempting to influence a public official and six counts of forgery. All charges are felonies.

Mesa County Clerk Bobbi Gross issued a statement regarding the arrests.

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On Oct. 21, Mesa County elections staff were contacted by citizen voters concerned that their general election ballots were rejected due to signature discrepancies, but that they also never received the ballot through mail and claimed voter fraud.

As investigators looked into each case of alleged voter fraud, they learned that at least four of the complaints were within a half-mile of each other in Grand Valley. In addition, some of the ballots were missing from groups of mailboxes, but there was no sign of forced entry into any of the boxes.

This led investigators to wonder if it was a postal operator. An investigator with the district attorney’s office contacted the United States Postal Service and learned that Stuart replaced the normal carrier on the affected mail route on Oct. 12, according to the arrest affidavit.

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Stuart allegedly told investigators on Oct. 24 that when she opened the mailbox covers to deliver the ballots, she would visually check the names on the mailbox covers with the voter’s name on the ballot. If the ballot did not match the name on the cover, she did not turn in the ballot, she told investigators. The USPS later told investigators that this is not what carriers are trained to do, “because they may not know for sure whether or not someone lives at a particular address,” according to the affidavit.

Stuart told investigators he put “Return to Sender” on the ballot to return it to the main hub and said that’s where they went. She denied involvement in the ballot thefts, claiming she had placed about 20 ballots in the bin for the ballots to be returned in this manner. Stuart also told investigators “there was no way her DNA was on the inside of any envelopes,” according to the affidavit.

On Election Day, investigators contacted Maxedon at her residence in Grand Junction. During the interview, the affidavit says he told investigators he “falsely filled out ballots that did not belong to him.” She also told investigators that the ballots were provided to her by “a man who worked for the CBI (Colorado Bureau of Investigation) that she ran into in a parking lot.”

According to the affidavit, Maxedon told investigators the man asked her to help her
is testing the voting system, so she filled out the ballots in her truck and handed the completed ballots back to the man. The affidavit said Maxedon “hand drew a map of where he met the CBI man at the Mesa Mall.”

Later in the interview with investigators, the affidavit says Maxedon told them she was friends with Stuart and then admitted she lied to investigators.

The affidavit said Maxedon explained how he began talking to Stuart in October and plans to “test” the vote signature system in the election. “The desired result was . . . to determine whether the signature verification process would detect that forged signatures were not those of known voter signatures on file.”

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She then told investigators that Stuart stole ballots from citizen mail and then gave Maxedon six or seven ballots each night for Maxedon to fill out, the affidavit said.

The victims are still being located and identified, the affidavit said, and at least 20 victims have been identified so far. As of November 5, there were 16 victims who were positively identified as being on the affected postal route and subject to voter fraud.

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