Efforts to hold a referendum on the public safety training center have been delayed about a week due to an apparent paperwork problem.
Cop City Vote, which is calling for the referendum, said in a statement that the Atlanta city clerk’s office informed the group that its initial petition was missing a line requiring city of Atlanta residents to validate each signature. The group added the line and resubmitted the petition. The clerk’s office will now have seven additional days to approve the petition before organizers can begin to collect signatures.
“I wish I could say we expected better from this administration,” Kamau Franklin, executive director of Community Movement Builders, said in the statement. “We immediately made the changes and are re-submitting it tomorrow morning, and call on the clerk to approve it as soon as possible. They did not mention any other issues with the document, whatsoever.”
Credit: Jenni Girtman
Credit: Jenni Girtman
The group submitted its original petition June 7, the same day it held a press conference outside City Hall to announce the plan for a referendum. Organizers said they learned of the problem with the petition only when they checked on its status Wednesday, June 14.
“The coalition’s legal team anticipated that there would be back and forth with the Clerk’s office as we worked together to finalize the petition language,” Alex Joseph, a legal adviser to the coalition, said in a release. “We are taking the City at its word that it supports our right to challenge the construction of Cop City through a referendum. The referendum process is nearly unprecedented in Georgia, and we have prepared and submitted an amended referendum petition that we are confident addresses the concerns raised by the City Clerk.”
Cop City Vote won’t be able to begin collecting signatures until the form is approved. The group estimates that it will need to collect more than 70,000 signatures to be able to put the referendum on the November ballot.
According to the group, more than 60 people have signed up for training as “neighborhood captains” and about 3,000 Atlanta residents have signed up to be notified when the petition is available to sign. The group has two sponsors ready to assist, with New Disability South Rising focusing on the signatures and Black Voters Matters on the campaign stages of the referendum, the group said.
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