AURORA | Arapahoe County prosecutors have dropped charges against another person charged in a controversial voter fraud case last fall, leaving just two people facing charges following the lengthy investigation.
Tadesse Degefa, 72, of Aurora, was scheduled to go on trial Wednesday on a misdemeanor charge of procuring false registration but prosecutors last week asked a judge to drop the charge, and the judge dismissed the case Wednesday morning, said Michelle Yi, a spokeswoman for the Arapahoe County district attorney’s office.
The cases are among more than 100 statewide identified by Colorado Secretary of Sate Scott Gessler, who said he pursued suspected fraud after extensive research in hopes of highlighting irregular election problems. Relatively few of the suspected cases have warranted charges, and critics have accused Gessler of a partisan ploy, picking on legal immigrants.
Arapahoe County prosecutors announced charges against Degefa and three others in November and said they were the result of a four-month investigation by six staffers working more than 300 hours investigating 41 suspects.
Of those 41 voters, prosecutors found more than half were eligible voters.
Degefa and another man, Vitaliy Grabchenko, were accused of illegally voting. Two others, Carl Blocker and Michael Michaelis, worked for a nonprofit called Work For Progress, and prosecutors said the men registered voters who were not eligible to cast a ballot in Colorado. Prosecutors in June dropped charges against Michaelis after they said there were questions involving some evidence in the case.
Yi said the cases against Blocker and Grabchenko are going forward.
Blocker’s trial is scheduled for October. Grabchenko is due in court Sept. 19 for arraignment.
When the charges came down last year, a spokesman for Gessler, said the two voter fraud cases in Arapahoe County were the only people from Gessler’s list of 155 possible ineligible voters who will face charges. But, he said, there is evidence that more people from that list voted illegally, but local prosecutors opted not to charge them with a crime.