A former U.S. Postal Service employee has pleaded guilty to stealing voters’ ballots during the 2024 presidential election in what prosecutors described as a scheme to undermine Colorado’s election security systems.
Vicki Lyn Stuart, 64, entered guilty pleas Monday to one count of identity theft and one count of forgery in the 21st Judicial District Court. Both charges are felonies.
As part of her plea agreement, 32 additional counts will be dropped.
“I feel like I am guilty for the part that I played in it,” Stuart told Judge Brian Flynn during the hearing, where she mostly responded with one-word answers to the court’s questions.
According to investigators, Stuart used her position as a postal worker in Grand Junction to steal at least 16 ballots from Mesa County residents before they could be delivered to their intended recipients in October 2024.
She then allegedly passed the stolen ballots to her friend and co-defendant, Sally Jane Maxedon (also known as Sally Jane Smith).
Court documents reveal that the pair hatched a plan to “test” the security Colorado’s election signature verification system.
This scheme involved “obtaining ballots, forging voter signatures, and then turning the ballots into Mesa County Elections Department,” with the goal of determining whether election officials could accurately detect the forged signatures.
The fraud was discovered when voters from the same subdivision, who used two different locked mailboxes, were notified by Colorado’s ballot tracking system that their ballots were being processed despite never having received them. Elections staff reported the suspicious activity to district attorney investigators on October 21, 2024.
The case prompted a multi-agency investigation involving local authorities, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, and Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser’s office.
State officials have provided conflicting information about how many fraudulent ballots made it through the verification process, with one source indicating at least one ballot was counted and another suggesting three stolen ballots were successfully processed as legitimate votes.
Stuart’s sentencing is scheduled for June 25, 2025.
Her co-defendant, Maxedon, who is accused of actually filling out and submitting the stolen ballots, is due in court Thursday for a review hearing.
The case highlights vulnerabilities in mail-in voting systems, which Republican leaders have criticized for years. Thankfully, Colorado’s voters used the state’s stacking system to monitor the status of their mail-in ballots, and helped in uncovering the scheme.