On a bad election night for some of the crankier candidates, an eccentric proposal was also rejected in the polls when voters in Denver opted against an initiative to track aliens from outer space.

The proposal, known as initiative 300, would have involved setting up a commission to monitor aliens and a website to allow members of the public to report UFO sightings.

It called on voters to "adopt an initiated ordinance to require the creation of an extraterrestrial affairs commission to help ensure the health, safety and cultural awareness of Denver residents and visitors in relation to potential encounters or interactions with extraterrestrial intelligent beings or their vehicles?"

More than 80% of voters rejected the idea.

The man who proposed the measure, Jeff Peckman, argued that the US government was tracking alien sightings but refused to make the reports public.

He said he was not surprised by the result.

"It's better than what we thought. This was always about engaging the voters and getting them involved. These things can take time," he told the Denver Post.

A website in support of the initiative said: "Over 400 government, military, and intelligence community witnesses have testified to their direct, personal, first-hand experience with UFOs, ETs, ET technology, and the cover-up that keeps this information secret."

Among the arguments on the website are that Michael Jackson believed in aliens, while "Ronald Reagan followed a UFO by plane for several minutes but was afraid to report it."

The initiative was not the first unconventional measure put forward by Peckman. In 2003 he tried to introduce a mass stress-reduction measure to Denver. It was also rejected by voters.