Opponents of Aurora’s strong-mayor campaign challenge validity of petition format and signatures

AURORA | Opponents of a proposal to empower Aurora’s mayor filed a formal protest with the city clerk’s office on Monday, questioning whether the petitions used to collect signatures from registered voters conformed to city rules.

The protest filed on behalf of former city official Charlie Richardson challenges the petition on the basis that, allegedly:

• The pages with spaces for signatures did not include the warning that signatories must be registered voters and sign with their real names, and that they should read the proposed legislation or the summary of the legislation first.
• The pages with spaces for signatures did not include a summary of the proposed legislation.
• The petitions did not have space for signatories to include the name of their city of residence.
• Some signatories wrote down the address of an apartment building but did not include the number of their apartment.
• People who solicited signatures from the public mischaracterized the proposed legislation as primarily having to do with term limits while most of the amendment language addresses enhancing the powers of the mayor.

For these reasons, the petition failed to satisfy the requirements of city code and relevant case law, attorneys Mark Grueskin, Thomas Rogers III and Nathan Bruggeman wrote.

On July 25, the clerk announced that the sponsors of the proposed charter amendment had collected 12,198 valid signatures, which would be enough to have the item placed on the November ballot. Anyone who wished to protest the validity of the signatures was given 20 days to submit their concerns in writing to the clerk.

Opponents of the amendment soon began combing through petition sections looking for invalid signatures that could push the petition below the required signature total of 12,017, 181 signatures above the required threshold.

However, Richardson said Monday that the anonymous opponents of the amendment ultimately decided to focus their protest on what they believe are problems with the format of the petition instead. He said they were concerned that focusing on particular signatures could “bog down” the effort as a whole.

Richardson said he believed the other concerns raised by the opponents of the item could be enough to sink the proposal.

“It appears that there are several potential fatal flaws in the petition and signatures,” he said. “My impression is that this was done hastily and without attention to detail.”

Suzanne Taheri, an attorney representing the sponsors of the amendment, later responded to the protest and Richardson’s comments by saying the petition forms were created and printed by the office of Aurora’s city clerk rather than the campaign.

A city spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The window for people to protest the clerk’s initial finding that the petition and enclosed signatures were sufficient for the item to move forward closed at 5 p.m. Monday.

The city has said that a copy of any protest will be sent to the petition representatives, and a hearing will be scheduled between 10 and 20 days after the protest is mailed. Hearings will be open to the public, and the clerk will make her decision no later than 10 days after the end of the hearing.

The city said in a press release that the “burden of proof is on the protestants to prove that the petition is insufficient.”

City spokesman Ryan Luby previously said the date when the clerk’s office makes its final determination of sufficiency would depend on the outcome of protests and any litigation that could arise from the process.