Former Colorado GOP chairman sentenced to probation, community service for 2016 voter fraud

Only one case of voter fraud was recorded and prosecuted in Colorado after the 2016 election, and the perpetrator, former Colorado Republican Party Chairman Steve Curtis, was just sentenced to four years of probation and 300 hours of community service. Curtis said at his hearing on Friday that "it was a normal and customary thing in my house" for him to fill out the ballots of his two ex-wives. "I didn't know that was illegal," he added. "But at no time did I plan this, and I still don't remember doing it." He said he had filled in the mail-in ballot of his estranged wife at the time, Kelly Curtis, and forged her signature during a diabetic blackout.

District Judge Julie Hoskins said she "didn't believe for a second" that he filled out the ballot, signed it with the correct ink and his wife's signature, and mailed it in during a blackout, and she almost upped his sentence to jail time, as prosecutors had requested, when he interrupted her, The Greeley Tribune reports. Curtis was caught when Kelly Curtis called the Weld County Clerk to obtain her mail-in ballot, only to be told she had already voted; DNA evidence and handwriting analysis led the district attorney's office to Steve Curtis. A jury convicted him of voter fraud and forgery, a felony and a misdimeanor, in December. Curtis, 57, was chairman of the state GOP from 1997 to 1999 and worked as a talk show host at KLZ-AM in Denver until as recently as last August.

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