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.
back in the 70’s when I was a cop they called us pigs! We replied ” next time you need help, Call a hippie! “Pride, Intelligence, and Guts” PIG!
The only reason these leftist groups are so opposed to signature matching is because then their cheating will be revealed.
Are they ready to do that for Presidential elections?
They should be doing this for the 2020 election, but then it was all done their way and no way that any signature will be questioned. .