Activist groups across Georgia have denounced the City of Atlanta’s decision to use signature matching in order to verify signatures on a petition that would allow voters to decide on the fate of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center.
The Vote to Stop Cop City coalition recently reported that it has collected over 100,000 signatures on its petition, which, if all lawful, would hand the fate of the training center – dubbed ‘cop city’ by activists – over to voters as a referendum on a ballot.
However, on August 21, the activist group in charge of collecting signatures revealed that the City of Atlanta intends to check every signature on the petition by signature matching to ensure the authenticity of each signature.
Yesterday, August 21, the City of Atlanta released an initial overview of their proposed verification process for petitions collected by the Cop City Vote coalition. This long-overdue insight into the next steps of the referendum process raised immediate and serious concerns. 🧵 pic.twitter.com/4ipMIfKgrs
— Vote to Stop Cop City (@CopCityVote) August 22, 2023
“The City’s expectations and their proposed process are highly and unnecessarily restrictive, and far exceed the standards required by law. Signature matching has an established history of disenfranchising voters and drawing legal challenges over its application,” the coalition said in a statement.
Additional activist groups have also denounced the City’s plan to use signature matching to validate the signatures on the petition, including the Young Democrats of Georgia, New Georgia Project, and New Georgia Project Action Fund.
In addition, activists are calling out U.S. Senators Raphael Warnock (D-GA) and Jon Ossoff (D-GA) for remaining silent on the issue, according to Fox 5 Atlanta.
“It’s just been crickets,” Amelia Weltner, a 34-year-old DeKalb County resident who has organized, canvassed and worked as a staffer for Democrats said in a statement to Fox 5. “Since it’s not Republicans doing the suppression, I guess it’s not as high of a concern? The biggest question I’m going to be asking is, ‘When we needed them. Where were they?’ DeKalb County and Fulton County are Georgia’s blue wall – they need our votes.”
The training center has been a source of controversy and subject of violent attacks ever since its approval by the Atlanta City Council in September 2021.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Georgia Star News and The Star News Network.
Photo “Stop Cop City” by Tyler Lahti CC4.0.
If the signatures are valid, why would anyone object to them being verified? Only if they aren’t valid. So if Atlanta wants a truly fair and transparent process, every signature should be verified. And the results of that verification should be made public. Who wants to bet that the results will be embarrassing to the petitioners?
One of their biggest complaints has been the quality and\or lack of training and here they are protesting a training center. SMH
They don’t want the signatures checked likely because of duplicates and most importantly:
OUTSTANDING WARRANTS.
Cops vs progressives. If only both sides could lose. Both are bad for the average American.
The only reason they are crying is they know many of the signatures are false.
The LEO’s need constant and updated training to deal with America’s Domestic terrorist criminals.
Nothing wrong with checking signatures and ID’s to insure a fair and honest vote.
A good % of these so-called activists are not from the area and not valid to vote on this matter.
It is the responsibility of the person voting to show proof they are eligible to vote.
So these activists are opposed to a law enforcement training center? Their motives are highly questionable at best. Want to create another Portland or match the anarchy today in California? Who exactly constitutes this group? ANTIFA? Are the activists even from the area? The elected should make the decision and go forward. Law enforcement cannot be over trained, the professional needs to be recognized and supported. As for the petition? Yes, every signature should be verified by any and all means. If any illegal conduct is discovered, those involved including the organizers and possibly those collecting signatures need to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Support the blue, enough of this left wing woke lunacy.