Two people who worked for a Front Range political canvassing company are charged with forging signatures on petitions used to get a Colorado school choice amendment on the 2024 general election ballot, the state attorney general’s office said.
A statewide grand jury indicted Cherrell Long of Nevada and Martin Arellano of Texas on three felony counts — attempting to influence a public servant, elections forgery and forgery — and a misdemeanor count of perjury, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said this week.
According to the indictment, Long and Arellano were independent contractors for Victor’s Canvassing in Colorado Springs and were tasked with gathering signatures for Amendment 80, a school choice measure that Colorado voters rejected in the November 2024 election.
Long and Arellano are accused of forging signatures on the petitions by signing the names of dead people and voters who had canceled their registrations because they had moved to a different county or out of state.
A company that reviewed the petition after it was first turned in found that of the 190,000 signatures submitted, 131,000 “appeared to be valid,” which was over the 124,238 signature threshold, the attorney general’s office said.
But staff at the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office found suspicious signatures during a post-election review because several did not match signatures that the state already had on record, the attorney general’s office said.
Investigators believe Long forged 19 signatures, including those of four dead people, while Arellano is accused of forging six signatures, also including four dead people.
“Petition circulators who submit fraudulent signatures to the state to put a candidate or initiative on the ballot must be held accountable for their unlawful conduct,” Weiser said in a statement. “We are committed to protecting our elections and safeguarding the process for petitioning onto the ballot.”
Anyone with information about Long or Arellano’s whereabouts should report the information to local law enforcement, state officials said.
