Officials say voter fraud schemes in Mesa County are under investigation

At least a dozen mail-in ballots were stolen, fraudulently filled out and submitted in Mesa County for the Nov. 5 election. This was made Thursday by Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold.

Authorities discovered the plan before most of the ballots were processed, she said. But three were successfully cast after passing a signature verification process. A fourth ballot almost got through, Griswold said, but it was stopped after the legitimate voter received notification that his ballot had been cast.

Election officials cannot retrieve the three fraudulent ballots, Griswold said, and they will be counted.

Confirmed voter fraud is rare in Colorado’s almost entirely mail-in voting system, which has numerous safeguards and checks to detect improper votes. While cases have been prosecuted over the years — including people’s attempts to vote with the ballots of their former or recently deceased spouses — the scheme alleged in Mesa County, Griswold said, is unprecedented.

All fraudulent ballots were completed, including the required signature on the back of the return envelope, and delivered through U.S. Postal Service mailboxes rather than ballot drop boxes. At least some of the ballots appeared to be signed by the same person, Griswold said.

She declined to say whether anyone had been arrested or whether any suspects had been identified.

Mesa County uses a process to verify electronic signatures and compare them to signatures on record. Election judges also check the signatures on the back of the envelopes manually at times. The signature verification system helped determine the extent of the problem in Mesa County. Two voters also contacted election officials after receiving notices they had never received before to correct ballots — that is, address concerns with their signatures.

Of the three ballots accepted for counting, all had been excluded for further review by the automated signature verification system; They were then accepted by the same election judge, said Jack Todd, a State Department spokesman, after a news conference Thursday afternoon in Denver. That judge has been reassigned, Todd said.

He added that a second review by a human judge is not unusual.

There are more than 112,000 active registered voters in Mesa County, according to state data. Although three ballots passed through the system, Griswold and Matt Crane, executive director of the Colorado County Clerks Association, said the incident was an example of the voting system working to detect potential fraud.

“The Mesa County team is double-checking every ballot envelope received at this time. The investigation into the situation is ongoing,” Griswold said. “We also know that Colorado’s elections are safe and secure, and this fraud attempt was quickly discovered and investigated thanks to the groundbreaking tools we have here.”

Griswold said another voting issue is being studied elsewhere in the state. Todd later said that the situation was similar to that in Mesa County and that he believed a local agency was investigating. He and Griswold declined to provide additional information.

The affected ballots in Mesa County were all stolen from addresses in close geographic proximity, Griswold told reporters. Voters whose ballots were stolen – including those whose ballots were successfully cast – can still vote.

Griswold said her office learned of the plan Wednesday, a day after Mesa County officials identified it. She declined to comment on when the ballots were believed to have been stolen, nor would she comment on whether the ballots were cast in favor of a particular political candidate or party.

A criminal investigation in Mesa County is ongoing, Griswold said. The Mesa County District Attorney’s Office declined to comment. The U.S. Postal Service’s Office of Inspector General also declined to comment Thursday evening.

In a statement sent after Griswold’s news conference, Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Bobbie Gross said she is “fully committed to ensuring the integrity and security of our elections” and that her office is “currently investigating attempted voter fraud.”

But Gross, a Republican, criticized Griswold’s decision to publicly announce the plan. She said it was “vital that we follow proper procedures to ensure a thorough and effective investigation without tipping off those involved.”

Griswold, a Democrat now serving her second term, has frequently defended the security of Colorado’s mail-in voting system, in which ballots are mailed to all active voters several weeks before the election.