Colorado woman charged with voter fraud, accused of forging dead parents’ signatures

EL PASO COUNTY, Colo. – A Colorado woman has been charged with six counts of voter fraud for allegedly writing her dead parents’ names on their mail-in ballots multiple times in elections between 2009 and 2013.

Sarilu Sosa-Sanchez, 59, was charged in late May in El Paso County with six counts of forgery of a government-issued document, a class 5 felony. A DNA collection was also ordered in the case.

She’ll be in an El Paso County court for her advisement hearing on the charges on Thursday morning.

Though voter fraud has become a much-discussed topic since President Donald Trump started postulating that millions of people may be voting illegally in U.S. elections last year, none of the charges Sosa-Sanchez faces are related to the 2016 election.

A source with knowledge of the investigation tells Denver7 that Sosa-Sanchez fraudulently voted with her deceased parents’ ballots several times starting in 2009 and up through a 2013 election.

Only one person in Colorado has been charged with voter fraud stemming from last year’s election: former Colorado Republican Party chairman Steven Curtis, who was also charged with one count of forgery of a government-issued document. He’s accused of signing his wife’s ballot with her name.

And Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams and other research have both noted that voter fraud is rare in the U.S.

Last year, the Colorado Attorney General’s Office investigated dozens cases of potential voter fraud regarding signatures on petition drives uncovered by Denver7 and the secretary of state’s office.

One of the signature gatherers charged, Maureen Moss, pleaded guilty in November to two counts of forgery in exchange for 32 other charges being dismissed.

And voter fraud has again been back in the news in recent weeks, as the Trump administration’s election integrity commission has requested voter roll information from every state in the U.S.

Williams said he would hand over the information that Colorado law requires him to release. But the commission on Monday asked all secretaries of state to wait to send the information over until a court case regarding the commission and its request is settled in a Washington, D.C. federal court.

Sosa-Sanchez will be in court Thursday at 10:30 a.m.

If convicted, she would face between 1 and 3 years in prison and fines of between $1,000 and $100,000 for each charge, as they are each class 5 felonies.