To put the issue on the ballot, organizers needed to collect signatures from 15% of the city’s voters. That works out to around 58,000 people. So even if many of the signatures are challenged, they probably have enough to get this on the ballot.

When it gets on the ballot is another question. It could go up this November which is what the activists are hoping. However, it’s also possible the counting and verification of the signatures will drag on long enough that the referendum would go on the next ballot in March. That’s when the Republican primaries will be taking place and it could mean a lot more conservative voters will be going to the polls. Simply put, the activists behind this have a much better chance of winning if this goes on the November ballot when turnout is low. That’s their hope.

But even if this does make the November ballot, it’s not completely clear that the activists can do what they’re trying to do.

A city spokesperson responded to the group’s announcement saying in part:

“We continue to agree with the broader precedent set by the Georgia Supreme Court that holds State Law does not authorize referendums to repeal City ordinances. This referendum seeks to remove the ground lease that was executed by the previous Administration for the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center and would violate the constitutional prohibition on the impairment of contracts. “

The New Yorker published a clearly sympathetic (to the protesters) story last week which says there are conflicting precedents in Georgia.

A paragraph in Georgia’s constitution grants residents what’s known as home rule: the right to challenge the decisions of local government through a referendum. Such referendums are rare in Georgia, and difficult to bring: at least fifteen per cent of a relevant municipality’s registered voters must sign a petition calling for one. Last year, however, a referendum was successfully brought in Camden County, five hours south of Atlanta, challenging a spaceport that Camden County’s board of commissioners had already approved. (A former governor had reportedly pitched the project to Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX.) The necessary signatures were collected, and the project was voted down handily. The county challenged the referendum effort—pointing to, among other things, “duplicate and inconsistent” voter signatures—and, later, its result. But, in February, the Supreme Court of Georgia upheld the vote, and home rule. (Two of the court’s judges, in a concurring opinion, expressed concern that “groups within a community will be empowered to regularly subject their local community to the expense of a series of referenda as a means of either protest or in an attempt to thwart the will of a fatigued majority in a low turnout election.”)

Camden isn’t the only precedent, though. More than two decades ago, citizens of Claxton, in southeast Georgia, pushed for a referendum to reverse the closing of railroad crossings in their city, and, in 1998, Georgia’s Supreme Court ruled against them. I asked Zohra Ahmed, an assistant professor at the University of Georgia School of Law, about these conflicting precedents. The Claxton case, like the Cop City referendum, concerned a municipality, she said, but it’s older than the Camden decision, “and the more recent case, in general, is more persuasive.” Ahmed also felt that the court had “selectively read” the constitutional provision in the Claxton case.

What author Charles Bethea doesn’t tell readers is that Zohra Ahmed isn’t just a disinterested assistant professor at a local law school. From perusing her X/Twitter account it’s clear she’s a supporter of left-wing causes including the effort to stop ‘cop city.’ She retweeted this a couple of days ago.

80K Atlantans have signed the petition to put Cop City on the ballot.

For context: only 78,643 Atlantans voted in the Mayoral Runoff.

This is a remarkable political moment in Atlanta. https://t.co/lTbMROBNfT

— nolan (@RevSouthNolan) August 14, 2023

That doesn’t mean she’s wrong but you should probably take her opinion with a grain of salt given her personal views. Eventually the author does get around to noting that it may not be that simple.

Meanwhile, the city of Atlanta has pushed back against the referendum effort in federal court. In mid-July, lawyers for the city argued that Atlanta cannot revoke its lease to the Atlanta Police Foundation, which has already been signed: “Repeal of a years’ old ordinance cannot retroactively revoke authorization to do something that has already been done,” they said in a court filing.

The whole effort is being sold as an exercise in democracy but it’s really dependent on voter apathy (in a November election) and perhaps a favorable state Supreme Court decision after that. My advice to supporters would be to a) file some sort of lawsuit to make sure this winds up on the March ballot and b) get busy building the site. The more progress the state Supreme Court is asked to erase somewhere down the line, the harder it will be to justify doing so.

Also, and I mean this sincerely, if it’s built the opponents will almost certainly resort to arson. That will rip the mask of respectability off this group. Their claims to give a damn about democracy will be exposed for the fraud it is. When they fail to stop this legally they will stop it another way and then they can be put in prison.