Speakers call for ‘legally valid’ elections in Denver, Aurora

Photo byMirah CurzeronUnsplash

Members of the public speaking in support of an organization called United Sovereign Americans dominated public comment periods at the Denver and Aurora City Councils on Monday. They called on both cities to adopt resolutions demanding “legally valid” elections.

According to its website, United Sovereign Americans formed in 2023 and has representatives in 24 states representing 387 electoral college votes. “United Sovereign Americans is a nonpartisan organization comprised entirely of thousands of grassroots citizen volunteers from across the United States working to ensure legally-valid elections that are fair, accurate, and trustworthy,” according to its website. “Our teams have measured the effect of millions of instances of apparent election fraud—as defined by the US Department of Justice—on the 2022 midterm elections. We have put it all together into a comprehensive and easy to understand framework, that shows that our voting system is broken, and the intent of qualified citizen voters has been drowned out by error. Through our education and litigation strategy we aim to fix it for all Americans.”

Every Tuesday from 5 p.m.-6:30 p.m. the organization hosts online training seminars about federal election law. The organization also legally challenged Maryland elections. “The Board of Elections did not deny the allegations of what constitutes a broken election process from beginning to end; instead, they simply refuse to fix it ,” according to the United Sovereign Americans website. “Their position is that no one can or will make them correct any of the errors. We certainly hope they are wrong, as should every Maryland voter. Our legal team is currently drafting the necessary documentation to proceed to the United States Court of Appeals for the 4th District and appeal this decision.”

Tenets for ‘legally valid’ elections

The organization has personalized resolutions for “legally valid” elections from state to state. Basic tenets they all include are:

· “Proof of citizenship, identity and eligibility to register and vote, not anonymous attestation.

· “ Voter rolls certified accurate and available for public review and challenge 30 days before the start of early voting. Voters added after that date must bring proof of citizenship, identity, and address in person to a qualified official at each polling place.

· “Hand-marked, secure ballots similar to currency. Where imaging technology is used for tabulation, the security features must be verifiable in the ballot image.

· “Systems, machines, security measures, infrastructure and conduct are required to be compliant with federal law for fraud prevention regarding risk assessment, certification, testing, and implementation.

· “ Adjudication must be signed-off by party, candidate, and trained citizen witnesses after being given full and effective observation rights. Candidates and trained citizens must be allowed immediate access to ballots, ballot images and CVRs.

· “Ballots, regardless of entry source, election operations, and systems must maintain end-to-end chain of custody from voter to vote count to final canvass, including auditability and witnessed transfer with paper records.

· “A NIST-compliant, randomized, statistically valid end-to-end audit, with a 95% confidence level, of all elections pursuant to the 14th Amendment, Section 2 must be performed. These audits are to be conducted by qualified, insured and bonded security, forensics or financial auditors, not personnel from within the election system. Reconciliation will include the vote count, real physical ballots, adjudication, CVRs, ballot count, qualified voter count, custody transfer, and all other paper and electronic election systems, including logs.

· “If the total of all unique variances above is more than 10% of the margin of victory, a new election must be held in the state for those candidates affected, unless the issues can be provably corrected by a manual hand recount and a full review of records.

· “Waiver of requirements is not allowed. Only end-to-end system compliance, from registration through certification, can guarantee the intent of the people is accurately recorded.”

About 10 people spoke about the elections during public comment period between the two cities. Most recited the tenets listed above. Members of the dais in Denver and Aurora do not respond to comments made during public comment period.