At least a dozen mail-in ballots have been stolen, fraudulently filled and submitted in Colorado for the Nov. 5 election, the Colorado secretary of state’s office said Thursday.
Officials said the problem was identified by the signature verification process, which checks signatures on ballots against signatures the state holds for voters.
Officials said the ballots were sent to the Mesa County elections office via the U.S. Postal Service and were not returned to the boxes.
The Secretary of State said that almost all of the votes on the stolen ballots were stopped before they were counted. However, three ballots were counted before election officials removed them from the process as they passed signature verification. The office confirmed that these votes cannot be edited or deleted.
“Elections in Colorado are safe and secure,” Secretary of State Jena Griswold said in a statement. “This attempted fraud was found and investigated quickly because of all of Colorado’s advanced processes and tools, such as signature verification, ballot tracking and treatment.”
Several affected voters contacted the Mesa County Clerk’s office after receiving information requesting that their ballots be processed due to discrepancies with their signatures, the secretary of state’s news release said. An affected voter notified the Mesa County clerk after receiving notification through the state’s tracking and notification system, BallotTrax, that the Mesa County Clerk’s ballot had been accepted for processing. Voters can also track the status of their ballots from this address govotecolorado.gov.
According to the secretary of state, the Mesa County District Attorney is investigating. The district attorney’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Secretary of State did not respond to a request to clarify which candidates the ballots were issued for.
Mesa County has been home to election conspiracy theories in recent years, including former Republican Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, who was recently convicted in court. 2021 security breach electoral system of the county.
Colorado has a robust universal mail ballot system in which a mail-in ballot is sent to every registered voter. The state’s system was a model for many other states during the 2020 pandemic as states sought to increase access.