In the runup to the 2024 election, a fringe group called United Sovereign Americans filed a barrage of borderline frivolous federal lawsuits seeking to block at least nine states from certifying election results. There is little chance that the lawsuits will prevail in court, but the group is still positioned to have an impact, by injecting baseless theories about certification into the election conspiracist ecosystem, threatening criminal complaints against local election officials, and building a network of right-wing activists.

United Sovereign Americans, or “USA,” has built a broad grassroots following. The group's officials regularly appear on Steve Bannon’s War Room and state and local election officials have been known to join their widely-attended online training sessions.

The legal theories that underpin the group's lawsuit are premised on what experts call a "gross misunderstanding of federal law." A federal law, the Help America Vote Act, requires that voting systems—like electronic voting machines and tabulators—cannot exceed certain error rates when counting ballots. But USA seeks to misapply this law to the state voter registration system, making the absurd argument that an election cannot be certified if there are claimed “errors” in the voter rolls. USA then makes unfounded claims about the existence of those "errors."

Among far-right activists, the theories have been granted an aura of legitimacy thanks to one of USA's co-founders inflating their role in drafting the federal law that the group's theories rely on.

Courts have consistently rejected USA's misreading of the law. Still, a major concern is that activists or local election board members will treat USA's ludicrous theories about federal law’s certification requirements as credible, and use them to justify attempts to block certification based on any number of asserted “errors” in their jurisdiction.

Indeed, the group has been doing more than just filing lawsuits. USA has also been encouraging activists to push for county-level resolutions that support the allegations in the lawsuits and embrace the group’s legal theories. As an indication of USA's grassroots support, at least 120 such resolutions have been proposed before county boards and city councils since December 2023, according to Documented’s analysis. At least five have been adopted.

USA has also described plans to pursue criminal actions against individual election officials who certify election results when USA claims “voter rolls are inaccurate.”

In a July 23, 2024 call with volunteers, USA's leader, Marly Hornik, said, “...we can go after these people personally. We can sue them for their personal assets, for certifying provably inaccurate, non-compliant elections. And we will.”

Documented · Marly Hornik on election officials in July 23 2024 USA call

USA reiterated this strategy in the final weeks before the 2024 election, pledging to block certification and target election officials personally.

In at least three emails sent in October 2024, USA wrote “With your help, we will halt the certification of elections that don’t uphold our civil rights AND hold election officials personally accountable for election fraud.”

An October 15, 2024 email from United Sovereign Americans promises to "halt" the certification of elections.

A fundraising page on USA’s website declares, “we have the evidence and are taking this fight to federal court to… enforce a legally valid 2024 general election” and “hold the criminals personally responsible.”

The page includes a supportive quote from Sidney Powell, the former Trump attorney who supported the former president's efforts to overturn the 2020 election. She later pleaded guilty in the Georgia election interference case.

Roots in fringe election denial movement

USA was formed in 2023 as a collaboration between Hornik and Harry Haury, a self-described “cybersecurity expert.”

Hornik also founded "NY Citizens Audit," a group whose canvassing activities triggered a cease-and-desist letter from the New York Attorney General in September 2023. Haury was part of L.A. County’s bungled disinformation-motivated prosecution against Konnech, an election software company.

The co-founders said they met in August 2022 at True the Vote’s election denial summit, The Pit. The group was incorporated as a Missouri nonprofit in July 2023, with Haury listed as the registered agent.

USA is a product of the decentralized grassroots election denial movement, and initially gained traction through influencers in the election denial space such as David Clements and the Lone Raccoon who promoted their efforts on Telegram.

USA does not have obvious support from nationally-organized election denial organizations, but has built a wide audience through its dramatic claims about the impact it claims it will have on the 2024 election.

In an October 21, 2024 video, Hornik—who is not a lawyer—claimed that USA's lawsuits will enable the group to "secure standing over 274 Electoral College votes...no one can get elected to the office of US president until the states can prove to the court that they ran a valid process."


Hornik has also stated that USA’s legal strategy involves seeking “a permanent restraining order against the certification of the 2024 election, because we did everything we could to secure it as legally valid, and we told them everything we knew about the problems in advance, and they did nothing to solve them…And we're not going to just, you know, go home crying and be like, 'Wow, we lost again.'"

Documented · Marly Hornik on certification in July 16 2024 USA call

Baseless Lawsuits, and an Inflated Resume

As of October 24, 2024, USA has filed federal lawsuits in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, Texas, Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia, and Colorado. The lawsuits draw from a deeply flawed analysis of the state voter rolls that the group compiles into what it calls "scorecards," and rely on a misreading of the National Voter Registration Act and HAVA. State officials have described USA's legal theory as consisting of “palpably baseless legal claims,” based on “adventurous interpretations of election data.”

Each lawsuit alleges that the states are violating federal law based on claimed voter list maintenance and voting system certification errors, and ask courts to prevent state officials from certifying an election until the claimed errors are remedied. Co-plaintiffs in the suits are a mixture of state-based "election integrity" groups and USA volunteers and chapter directors.

In most of the lawsuits, the group is represented by Bruce Castor, a Pennsylvania-based attorney who represented then-President Trump in his second impeachment hearing. Tim Vetter, formerly of Check My Vote, is now leading USA’s national data efforts.

The lawsuits are premised on the faulty theory that a federal law, HAVA, prohibits the certification of an election if “voting system errors” exceed a certain threshold, and argue that this should include purported errors in the voter rolls.

This is clearly incorrect.

As the Ohio Attorney General’s office noted in its motion to dismiss USA's case, “HAVA has nothing to say about error rates for voter-registration lists.”

HAVA provides that voting machine systems cannot exceed certain error rates when counting ballots, but USA seeks to apply this law to the state voter registration system, arguing that an election cannot be certified if there are “errors” in the voter rolls.

USA then uses flawed data analyses to reach their conclusions about voter registration errors in each state. For example, the voter roll “errors” cited in USA’s lawsuits include claims of duplicate registrations, which are largely the product of USA misunderstanding how to analyze voter rolls across multiple years.

HAVA also does not provide for a private right of action, so USA cites another federal law as the basis for bringing their lawsuits.

In a June 2024 interview with Votebeat, Castor appeared unfamiliar with the relevant laws and unable to support the legal assertions made in his Pennsylvania complaint (and later repeated in USA’s complaints against other states). Castor told Votebeat that his understanding of HAVA came from an unnamed “expert.”

USA’s co-founder, Harry Haury, has been touted by the Gateway Pundit as a “co-author” of HAVA, and in a June 2024 conference bio, described his election experience as including “consulting on the design and authoring” of HAVA. He was also described as a "HAVA co-author" in a David Clements documentary. In a September 2024 appearance in support of Election Integrity Network-backed changes to Georgia election rules, Haury once more emphasized his HAVA credentials.

However, in an October 2023 media appearance, Haury gave a more detailed account of his involvement, stating that his activism in Missouri “translated just by serendipity into what became HAVA.” Many of USA’s claims rest on Haury’s alleged expertise.

Claimed voter roll "errors" are product of flawed analysis

Not only is USA's legal theory based on a misreading of the law, their conclusions about voter roll “errors” are drawn from a misunderstanding of voter rolls.

One glaring error is USA’s focus on “duplicate registrations.” As the Brennan Center described in its Maryland amicus brief, USA combined voter data from several years into a single database, which fails to account for changes to the voter file each year—such as changes in a voter record that would trigger a new identification number.

“When voters change their last name (often after marriage), states generally give them a new voter identification number,” the group wrote. “States follow a similar practice if voters register with a middle initial, but the state later obtains their full middle name.” State officials will then remove the outdated information from the file during routine list maintenance.

“Because [USA’s] single database of multiple voter files [from multiple years] failed to account for (1) that practice and (2) the fact that the state later removes the old voter identification numbers from the rolls, there is no basis for the inference that his list of duplicates constitute illegal registrations; [USA’s expert] found duplicates simply by spotting a voter with an old identification number on an earlier voter file, as well as the voter with their new identification number on an updated file,” Brennan Center wrote. USA’s analysis “simply fails to reflect that the 2023 voter files no longer contain the old voter identification numbers from 2021.”

Other “errors” have reasonable explanations, such as data entry errors and the functioning of federal laws that prevent officials from removing out-of-date registrations for several years. “I’m confident that Pennsylvania’s voter registration list isn’t perfect, but I have zero faith in the figures cited by [USA’s] complaint,” Nicholas Stephanopoulos, a law professor at Harvard University, told Votebeat. “I expect that a proper review of this data will show that few, if any, unregistered or improperly registered voters cast ballots in 2022.”

“The core problem is almost always human data entry,” an Ohio Secretary of State official told USA earlier this year, according to records obtained by Documented.

USA has used its misinformed voter roll analysis to make some exceptional assertions. The group claims that in 20 states, “our data analysis of 2022 official records show 29 million invalid and potentially illegal voter registrations, 10 million illegal votes from ineligible registrants, [and] More than two million votes without voters.” These claims are not true.

These two independently misinformed assertions—a legal theory that erroneously conflates voter registration records with vote-counting equipment, and a voter rolls analysis that misreads the data—form the basis of USA's frivolous lawsuits.

Threatening criminal complaints against election officials

Even if USA cannot persuade a federal court to block certification—which it almost certainly will not—the group is planning to use the threat of civil and criminal liability to intimidate election officials into refusing to certify the results.

USA says it is planning to file criminal complaints against individual election officials who certify election results when “voter rolls are inaccurate” or otherwise not “legally compliant.” In other instances, USA has claimed they will sue election officials in civil court.

“The duty of election officials is to be able to prove that all the procedures have been followed properly...they are breaking the federal law when they sign off on something that they know is wrong,” USA wrote in its talking points document, in an apparent reference to certification. “When an election official ignores the law it is a crime.”

“We have to convince officials we are coming after them with the law," the document says.

USA has also connected with law enforcement officials. Records obtained by American Oversight show that in March of 2024, USA's co-founder, Harry Haury, contacted Barry County, Michigan Sheriff Dar Leaf, who has become notorious for his embrace of election conspiracy theories. USA's correspondence with Sheriff Leaf (at pp. 909-1256) included an annotated copy of the Justice Department's "Federal Prosecution of Election Offenses" manual, as well as materials from USA's litigation.

In a July 16, 2024 training session, Hornik said, “I'm pretty happy with the process of accountability that exists right now. The state is responsible if people who don't comply with the law have committed election fraud. And if they won't, if they continue to deny our civil rights, after all this has been discussed and exposed and explained in court, we can sue them directly and personally in civil court against their own assets…That's pretty darn intimidating if you're an election official.”

Documented · Marly Hornik on election officials in July 16 2024 USA call

In the week before the 2024 election, USA floated a new theory alleging that election officials engaged in criminal activity in the 2022 elections.

In an October 26, 2024 Twitter thread, USA accused election officials of what they called "vote washing" in 2022, saying that "we have found proof of voters being moved in and out of the voter rolls, resulting in massive changes to the voter record...These are in-stream attempts to destroy the digital evidence as the paper trail is rewritten." The thread then accused unnamed election officials of engaging in "intentional, malicious, illegal activity."

County-level resolutions supplement legal strategy

USA is also encouraging local activists to press election officials to adopt resolutions at their local supervisor/board meetings that echo the claims in the group’s “scorecards” and lawsuits.

The jurisdictions where these resolutions have gained traction could preview efforts to block certification.

The resolutions rely on the same faulty legal and data analyses that underpin the group's lawsuits—namely, (1) that the state’s voter rolls are inaccurate and include ineligible voters, (2) that ineligible voters cast ballots, (3) that more votes were counted than voters who cast ballots, and (4) that the alleged inaccurate voter rolls constitute “voting system errors” that exceeded HAVA’s permissible error rate.

Based on these claimed errors, the resolution declares that “certification as defined by law, an attestation of accuracy and compliance, appears to have been fraudulent and illegal,” and urges a variety of policy changes. In an October 7, 2024 tweet, Hornik claimed that USA members have made 565 presentations “so far.”

Documented has identified over 120 resolution presentations made by members of USA to various county boards and city councils across the country. They span eleven states, and are mostly concentrated in California, Florida, Illinois, and Massachusetts. The presentations follow a standard format.

First, at public comment periods, and introducing themselves as “a volunteer with United Sovereign Americans, not a spokesperson,” one speaker reads a prepared statement alleging “our audit of the 2022 election using only official data provided by state elections officials, shows that the 2022 election may not have been accurate or legally compliant.” The next few speakers then present a reading of the state’s scorecard data, and “call upon our representatives to provide relief to the people and the insurance of domestic tranquility by joining us in demanding a valid 2024 general election that upholds these existing laws and equitable principles of law.”

The speakers then read the list of policies they are requesting: proof of citizenship, “voter rolls certified accurate and available for public review and challenge 30 days before the start of early voting,” bringing election equipment and systems into compliance with federal law, and a list of other demands, including “hand-marked secure ballots similar to currency" and requests for forensic audits. The speakers conclude by urging local officials to pass the resolution and directing them to the USA website. Agenda packets from meetings where the resolutions are proposed show a standardized form customized with the state-specific data and the names of local officials to sign.

Reactions from officials, where found, have been mixed. A member of the Collier County, Florida Board of County Commissioners proposed a USA resolution in April 2024, but it was rejected by the county’s Republican-led Board of Commissioners, with commissioners expressing skepticism of a “cookie cutter resolution” that “stipulates a lot of things that are not consequential to Collier County.” In Billerica, Massachusetts, a board member said, “I’m offended by the presentation, thank you,” noting the lack of success USA has had in court.

At least five county boards and town councils have appeared open to USA’s ideas. In Jackson, New York, the Jackson Town Board passed a resolution in April 2024. The Polk County, Florida Board of County Commissioners passed the resolution in September 2024, and Muskingum County, Ohio passed a modified version of the resolution in August 2024. In Christian County, Illinois, the Board approved the creation of a subcommittee to look into the resolution, and Carteret County, North Carolina commissioners voted unanimously to pass the resolution in their September 16, 2024 meeting.

Crowdsourcing conspiracies for post-election challenges

USA has also described plans to engage in additional litigation after votes are cast.

“Certainly we plan to file lawsuits during the election,” Hornik said on a September 20, 2024 Association of Mature American Citizens (AMAC) podcast. “And one of the things that these actions have secured is ironclad standing during the election for citizens to challenge election returns as a matter of law.”

A plaintiff in USA's Illinois lawsuit, Ken Zitko, said in a September 24, 2024 USA call, “Once this election is complete, the fact that we [filed] that complaint anticipating issues . . . establishes standing for any citizen in each of those states to challenge the outcome based on any of these criteria.”

One way that USA is gearing up for post-election litigation is by crowdsourcing reports of election "irregularities" from its network of election conspiracy theorists.

In late September 2024, USA created an “election complaint form” on its website. According to Hornik, the "evidence" generated by activists using this form will support USA's post-election strategy to block certification.

In an October 1, 2024 meeting, Hornik said, “All we have to do is garner enough errors inside of the voting system in real time to say, this looks like the process is breaking again. And then the judge has a quandary. There's two ways that we're going to propose dealing with the quandary. One is either to invalidate the existing election because it's not reliable and the state has to do it again or sign a consent decree with United Sovereign Americans, and the entire election process is completely audited end to end…”

Documented · Marly Hornik on election complaint form in October 1 2024 USA call

Reports filed using USA's "election complaint form" will be submitted to both USA and the relevant authorities, the group says. An instructional video on the complaint form page displays a lengthy list of potential issues at the polls that a voter can report, ranging from “the lines were too long” to “the printers were not working.” Other options are designed to capture potential issues with instructions at the polls, such as “I was not allowed to fix my ballot after I made a mistake” and “I went to the wrong polling place and was not given a provisional ballot.”

“This is going to give us evidence, real time evidence, that the states have declined once again to follow the law, as we asserted they would," Hornik said on the September 20, 2024 AMAC podcast. "It's going to help us prevent certification of false returns.”

List of pending USA lawsuits

Current Litigation:

Maryland: The Maryland lawsuit was filed March 6, 2024 by a real estate and planning lawyer with little background in election law on behalf of USA and a fringe election conspiracy theory group called Maryland Election Integrity LLC. It appears that USA’s first lawsuit was filed in Maryland because of an existing relationship with this group. The lawsuit was dismissed for lack of standing on May 8, 2024, after which the group filed an appeal. The case is tentatively calendared for oral argument in the Fourth Circuit during the December 10-13 session.

Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania lawsuit was filed by Castor on June 18, 2024 on behalf of USA and three individuals. One of the plaintiffs, Ruth Moton, was a candidate for state office in 2022, which USA apparently hopes will provide a stronger legal standing argument.

Ohio: The Ohio lawsuit was filed by Castor and West Virginia attorney R. Aaron Miller on August 8, 2024. The plaintiffs are USA, Coalition of Concerned Voters of Ohio (referred to as “Concerned Citizen Voters of Ohio” in the USA press release), and three individuals, including one who was a 2022 local school board candidate defeated by four votes.

Florida: The Florida lawsuit was filed by Castor on August 19, 2024 on behalf of USA, Citizens Defending Freedom, and nine individuals, including several who are 2024 candidates for state and local offices. Citizens Defending Freedom is a fringe Florida-based conservative nonprofit that has historically focused on culture war issues.

Texas: The Texas lawsuit was filed by Castor on August 27, 2024 on behalf of USA, Citizens Defending Freedom, and an individual, Bernard Johnson who is running a longshot third-party campaign for Texas’s 19th Congressional District.

North Carolina: The North Carolina lawsuit was filed by Castor on August 28, 2024 on behalf of USA and an individual named Richard Yost who is described in the complaint as a Granville County election judge and the information technology manager for USA.

Michigan: The Michigan lawsuit was filed by Castor on August 28, 2024 on behalf of USA, Michigan Fair Elections (which is the state chapter of Cleta Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network), Tim Vetter and Phani Mantravadi (who co-founded Check My Vote), and four other individuals, including one who is a 2024 candidate for local office.

Georgia: The Georgia lawsuit was filed by Castor on September 5, 2024 on behalf of eight individual plaintiffs, including Rep. Charlice Byrd who is a state lawmaker running for reelection. The initial complaint omitted USA in the caption, and they filed an amended complaint adding USA on September 11, 2024.

Colorado: The Colorado lawsuit was filed by Castor and local counsel on September 10, 2024 on behalf of USA and two individuals, including Ramey Johnson is a 2024 Republican candidate for the Colorado state legislature.