Politics
NEW: Postal Worker Pleads Guilty In Stunning Scheme To Rig 2024 Election
A Colorado U.S. postal worker has pleaded guilty to trying to rig the 2024 election, according to prosecutors who announced they reached a deal that may involve prison time.
The absurd case involved Vicki Stuart, a 64-year-old former employee of the U.S. Postal Service who on Monday admitted to forgery and identify theft in an attempt to steal ballots and cast votes in the names of other Americans during the 2024 election.
Stuart had been charged with 34 counts in connection with her ballot theft scheme, according to Colorado Public Radio. She and another woman in Mesa County allegedly stole dozens of mail-in ballots as they passed through her truck, opening and filling them out for their preferred candidate rather than delivering them to their intended recipients.
“I feel like I am guilty for the part that I played in it,” Stuart told Judge Brian Flynn about why she accepted prosecutors’ plea deal to ostensibly reduce her sentencing on felony counts.
The postal worker’s scheme fell apart after multiple voters complained to the secretary of state that they had not received their ballots even though the state’s voter tracking system showed that their ballots were in the process of being received and counted. Stuart was a USPS employee in direct contact with the ballots during that time.
Sally Jane Maxedone, the other woman being prosecuted in the case, is scheduled to participate in her next hearing on June 25, 2025, the Daily Caller reports.
Identity theft is a class 4 felony and carries a punishment of up to $500,000 per count and two to six years in prison, according to the Colorado Legal Defense Group. Stuart’s additional charge of forgery carries up to five years in prison and a maximum $100,000 fine.
Colorado’s election night results were further apart than the traditional swing states, though it wasn’t the only blue state where ballots were tampered with. Democratic candidates in Massachusetts have been convicted or investigated for allegedly stealing ballots from mailboxes or, in another case, offering cash to voters in 2023.
U.S. House Republicans have passed the SAVE Act, which would require certain qualified identification documents to vote in national elections, though the legislation has been held up in the GOP-led U.S. Senate.
History suggests that the measure is popular with Americans. A 2024 poll by Gallup found that a stunning 84% support requiring some form of ID to vote.
Instances of voter fraud are not the only danger that modern elections must contend with — so too are vandalism and incompetence continual adversaries.
Hundreds of ballots were burned in Washington State shortly before the 2024 election, an apparent act of vandalism by a left-wing activist. In Arizona, which narrowly went for President Trump last year, the Democratic secretary of state came under heavy fire within her own party after about 100,000 ballots were errantly mailed to the wrong voters.
