At least a dozen mailed ballots intercepted in Mesa County before Colorado voters received them

At least a dozen mailed ballots were intercepted and cast on the Western Slope before voters received them, according to the Colorado Secretary of State's Office. Three of those ballots were cast and counted in Mesa County before the county clerk was able to pull them from the final tally.

Colorado's Department of State learned about the intercepted ballots on Tuesday.

"The ballots were filled out, the return envelopes were signed, they were then returned to a USPS blue box, so that's a postal box, not a ballot drop box," said Secretary of State Jena Griswold in a news conference on Thursday afternoon. "The issue was discovered during the signature verification process."

Griswold said that four of the ballots made it through the initial round of signature verification and that at least three voters had received communication from the Mesa County Clerk. Mesa County mailed two of the voters affected to ask them to cure their ballots, meaning to fix their signatures because the signatures were rejected during the signature verification process. 

"The voter reached out to Mesa County to tell them they did not vote their ballot and or receive it," said Griswold. "At least one other affected voter received a message through the BallotTrax system... that their ballot was received by their county clerk. Again, the voter did not receive their ballot and had not voted their ballot."

Griswold said Mesa County Clerk Bobbie Gross began an investigation and discovered that the ballots in question had been sent in close proximity to each other. During the investigation, they discovered that some of the ballots had been signed by the same person. The clerk then turned over the investigation to the 21st Judicial District Attorney who initiated a criminal investigation. 

Griswold said the U.S. Postal Service has been alerted and it has begun its own investigation. 

"The way that it works with the signature verification process, with our curing process, with all of these, with our BallotTrax process, is designed for both accessibility and security, so people can know that their ballots are on the way, have peace of mind, but also know with the curing process that 'Hey there was an issue with your signature, you can come in and fix it' and also on the correspondence it says 'If you didn't submit your ballot, let us know,'" said Matt Crane, Executive Director of the Colorado County Clerks Association.

Griswold said every returned ballot undergoes signature verification in Colorado by comparing the signature on the ballot to the signature the voter has on file, "Voter fraud, voter intimidation and voter harassment are illegal in Colorado."

She also reiterated that the state's elections are safe and secure, "Colorado's elections are safe and secure and this attempt at fraud was found and investigated quickly because of the groundbreaking tools that we have here."

Earlier this month, former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters was sentenced to 8-and-a-half years in prison and additional time to be served in the Mesa County Detention Center for a total of nine years incarceration after she was convicted in August on 7 of 10 counts in her Colorado election interference case. Peters had falsely claimed the 2020 election results were marred by rigged voting machines.