Thousands of votes already cast in one Colorado county are being reviewed again after election staff discovered at least a dozen fraudulent ballots. The Colorado Secretary of State’s office said the ballots were stolen, fraudulently filled out and mailed into the Mesa County election office.
Officials identified the issue by the signature verification process, which compares the signatures on ballots to those the state has on file for voters.
Several of the affected voters reached out saying they never sent in their ballot after they received a message from the county clerk’s office that their signature had a discrepancy.
Other voters who had their ballots stolen would have been notified, but those ballots were intercepted in time.
“What we also know is that Colorado’s elections are safe and secure and this attempt at fraud was found and investigated quickly because of Colorado’s groundbreaking tools that we have here,” Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said.
The Mesa County district attorney is investigating. Griswold said it appeared the same person signed a number of the ballots, but it is not clear if that individual signed all of them.
All registered voters in Colorado receive ballots by mail, which they can return by mail, at a drop box or polling center.
