June 26, 2025 10:30 AM UTC

FAFO: Have We Mentioned Recently That Election Fraud Doesn't Pay?

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Grand Junction Sentinel’s Sam Klomhaus reports, a former U.S. Postal Service worker in Grand Junction was sentenced to five years in the Colorado state hoosegow for her part in a crackpot scheme to “test” the state’s election security by stealing and voting 19 ballots that didn’t belong to her–otherwise known as election fraud:

Vicki Stuart, 64, told police she and Sally Jane Maxedon (a.k.a. Smith), who did not work for the Postal Service, were trying to test out the election system when Stuart stole the ballots, which were then forged and delivered to the Mesa County Clerk’s Office during the November election cycle…

The incident was reported to the 21st Judicial District Attorney investigators by elections staff on Oct. 21, 2024. In Colorado, the District Attorney’s Office is tasked with investigating crimes related to elections, and DA investigators launched a criminal investigation with the assistance and coordination of other local, state and federal agencies — including the Colorado Bureau of Investigation and Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser — according to a news release.

Smith’s fingerprints were found on the ballots, according to police.

The case has parallels to the felony conviction of former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, who arranged for an election conspiracy theorist to gain illegal access to voting machines in a failed attempt to provide evidence to support Peters’ belief that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump. Although Vicki Stuart is personally unaffiliated, her co-conspirator Sally Maxedon is a registered Republican. Stuart stole the ballots she had access to as a postal worker, while Maxedon is alleged to have filled most of them out.

But their Tina Peters-style defense that they were acting in “good faith” by stealing and forging ballots to “test the system” was rebuffed by the judge at sentencing:

During a sentencing hearing Wednesday, Judge Brian Flynn rejected the explanation that Stuart and Smith were trying to test the signature verification system because Stuart and Smith would not have known if the signatures got through the process or not.

“To me it rings more true that it’s someone trying to influence the election,” Flynn said.

Although it’s probable that 19 forged ballots did not swing the results of any election, this very much was an attempt to influence the election–by attempting to undermine confidence in the result. These two alleged co-conspirators were so convinced that Colorado’s election system is not secure that they decided to commit crimes themselves to see what might happen.

And what happened? In former postal worker Vicki Stuart’s case, 34 criminal charges, which Stuart pleaded down to two felonies, and a five-year prison sentence. The takeaway from this, just like in Tina Peters’ case, is the opposite of what they had hoped to prove–Colorado’s election system works, successfully detects attempts to defraud or thwart election system security, and results in penalties that would deter any reasonable person from attempting to beat the system for such a miniscule gain. That’s why except in cases of conspiracy theorists chasing their own predisposed conclusions, election fraud pretty much never happens. The harsh sentence is necessary both to deter future attempts, and as punishment for the three votes of the 19 cast that reportedly made it through.

Once again, it’s a case of self-generated election fraud from the side that now cries fraud whenever they lose. From former GOP chairman Steve Curtis felonious forging of his ex-wife’s ballot to conservative carnival barker Jon Caldara’s 2013 voter registration shenanigans for which he only narrowly escaped prosecution, the lesson is simple: don’t fuck with Colorado elections.

In our state it’s easy to vote, hard to cheat, and the penalties for screwing around with our gold-standard election system are not worth it.