Looks like onetime state GOP chair and outspoken conservative stalwart Steve Curtis – charged in March with voter fraud and forgery for casting his ex-wife’s mail-in ballot in last November’s election – will next head to court Aug. 9. That’s the word from the Weld County District Attorney’s Office, which is handling the case.

Curtis had been scheduled to appear May 19 in Weld County District Court but requested more time to prepare and was granted the new August court date, a DA’s spokesman said.

As Denver’s Fox 31-TV reported in March:

Weld County Prosecutors discovered the forgery when (former wife) Kelly Curtis called the Weld County Elections Office in October asking how she could vote since she had just moved to South Carolina but was still registered to vote in Colorado.

That’s when she said an election worker told her she had already voted by mail, and the elections office already had her ballot.

…verification judges for the Weld County Clerk and Recorder’s Office got involved.  “We compared her (ballot) signature just to the signatures on her registration,” said Weld County Clerk and Recorder Carly Koppes, who quickly determined the signatures didn’t match but noted the the ballot was sent from Steve Curtis’s home in Firestone, Colo.

Curtis was allowed to remain free following his initial court appearance in Greeley March 21. He faces up to 18 months in jail for the misdemeanor count of election fraud and up to three years in prison for the felony count of forgery, according to Fox 31’s March report.

Curtis was chair of the state GOP from 1997 to 1999, a tumultuous tenure marred by infighting that pitted his hardline, pro-life, religious wing of the party against more moderate elements that included then-Gov. Bill Owens.

Some may recall Curtis, a staunch anti-abortion activist and onetime death-penalty advocate, had been a victim in a horrific homicide in 1989 at his southeast Denver home. He was shot and left for dead alongside a roommate who was killed.

More recently, Curtis has been a talk-radio host on Denver’s KLZ-560 AM radio. At the time of his court appearance, Fox31 reported:

Curtis’ bosses at Crawford Broadcasting in Dallas said Curtis is innocent until proven guilty and it has no intention of taking disciplinary action unless and until he’s convicted.

However, his show does not now appear on the station’s daily programming lineup, and the  audio from his most recent broadcast was posted about two months ago – including a listener’s snide comments about the pending charges.