2 arrested in stolen Mesa County ballots investigation, including USPS mail carrier

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

On Oct. 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 issue was discovered during routine signature verification, as citizens reported they had never submitted a ballot or even received their ballot in the mail.

The 21st District Attorney's Office launched an investigation before the matter became public, on Oct. 21. According to arrest affidavits, both suspects in the ballot thefts were arrested on Wednesday morning in Mesa County.

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

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

Arrest document: USPS carriers accused of ballot theft

On Oct. 21, the Mesa County Elections staff was contacted by citizen voters concerned that their General Election ballots had been rejected due to signature discrepancies, but that they had also never received their mail-in ballot, and asserted voter fraud.

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

This led investigators to consider if it was a mail carrier. A district attorney's office investigator contacted the United States Postal Service and learned that Stuart had substituted for the normal carrier on the impacted mail route on Oct. 12, according to the arrest affidavit.

Stuart allegedly told investigators on Oct. 24 that when she opened mailbox lids to deliver ballots, she would visually check the names on the mailbox lids against the voter name on the ballot. If the ballot did not match the name on the lid, she did not deliver the ballot, she told investigators. The USPS later told investigators this is not what carriers are instructed to do, "as they may not know for certain if someone is living at a particular address or not," according to the affidavit.

Stuart told investigators that she 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, alleging that she put about 20 ballots in the bin for the ballots to be returned in such a fashion. Stuart also told investigators "there was no chance her DNA would be on the inside of any of the envelopes," according to the affidavit.

On Election Day, investigators contacted Maxedon at her residence in Grand Junction. During the interview, the affidavit says she told investigators she "falsely completed voting ballots which did not belong to her." She also told investigators the ballots were provided to her by "a male who worked at CBI (The Colorado Bureau of Investigation), who she met randomly in a parking lot."

According to the affidavit, Maxedon told investigators that the man asked her to help
test the voting system, so she filled out ballots in her truck and gave the completed ballots back to the man. The affidavit said that Maxedon "hand drew a map of where she met the CBI man at Mesa Mall."

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

The affidavit said that Maxedon explained how she began talking to Stuart in October and planed to "test" the voting signature system in the election. The "desired outcome was ... to determine if the signature verification process would detect if the forged signatures were not those of the known voter signatures on file."

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

Victims are still being located and identified, the affidavit stated, and at least 20 victims have been identified so far. As of Nov. 5, there were 16 victims who were positively identified as being on the impacted mail route and had been subject to voter fraud.