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Referendum Roundup

In recent years, Georgia activists have looked with envy as other states use referendums to demand certain policies that their elected officials have been unable or unwilling to implement. The website Ballotpedia catalogs a wide range of ballot initiatives around the country on issues including lifting abortion restrictions, rank choice voting, and Medicaid Expansion. For example, between 1996 and 2022, there were 28 ballot measures to increase a state's minimum wage. Voters approved 26 of these initiatives (over 92%) and rejected only two.

The vast majority of these progressive ballot measures in other states are initiated by citizens. Most states have ways that individuals can organize, get supporting signatures, and apply to place an issue on a ballot for a binding vote. Georgia is not one of these states. In fact, most states that do not allow the citizen-initiated referendum process are in the South. However, what Georgia has in its state constitution and code is a way for citizens to use a referendum process to challenge actions by a county commission or city council. Residents are learning ways their voices can be heard through citizen-initiated ballot referendums. Not surprisingly, many elected officials are not happy about this challenge to their power.

This referendum provision was mainly ignored until a lawyer in Camden County in the extreme southeast corner of Georgia initiated a referendum to void the county's land purchase for a “Space Port” launch pad. After legal challenges, the referendum passed overwhelmingly and the land purchase was halted. This Peach from February 2022 recounts some of the battles.

This successful Camden County referendum caught the eye of activists in Atlanta who had been mounting opposition to the construction of the Public Safety Training Center, or Cop City. After months of protests, the killing by GBI of Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, also known as Tortuguita, and a 17-hour city council meeting with over 400 citizens speaking out against the building of Cop City, activists began planning for a referendum to force a city-wide vote on whether to construct the training facility. This Peach outlines some of the issues that led to a massive petition drive. Volunteers collected over 100,000 signatures from Atlanta voters, far surpassing the number city officials had indicated was required.

But this referendum vote is currently stalled in court because of a lawsuit asking for a pretty simple remedy. Some non-city of Atlanta residents felt they had a free-speech right to circulate petitions and collect signatures despite a contrary stipulation by the city of Atlanta. This free speech claim has been litigated in several jurisdictions nationwide, and the courts have ruled in favor of non-resident plaintiffs. In fact, the Atlanta trial judge ruled not only that the non-residents had a right to circulate petitions but also restarted the 60-day timeline to collect signatures as a remedy for the city’s incorrect restriction. But the city appealed. A hearing was held before a three-judge panel of the Eleventh Circuit in December of 2023. The Court of Appeals has not yet issued a decision. 

Alex Joseph, an Atlanta attorney and volunteer with the Vote Cop City effort, said, “I keep getting asked by people that are interested in this movement, ‘Is there anything we can do to nudge the 11th Circuit, to have our voices heard?’ And the 11th Circuit is this strange . . . faceless, non-responsive entity, where there is literally nothing we can do to get them to go faster, and . . . they don't answer to anyone. That's its own unique frustration.” Joseph adds that this experience has caused a lot of people in Atlanta to lose faith in the system.

Paul Glaze, with the Vote to Stop Cop City Press Team, echoes this concern about loss of faith. “The City of Atlanta, including both Council and the Mayor, are committed to putting politics before democracy.

They weaponize semantics, produce slanted polls that over-sample Buckhead, and fantasize that their aging power structure speaks for communities that their own policies have evicted from within the city limits. After they appealed the referendum to the 11th Circuit, we ceased pretending that they were a legitimate governing body interested in democracy.” 

Indeed, in addition to the numerous roadblocks Glaze mentions, the very fact that the city decided to appeal the trial court decision is telling. The suit concerned a narrow question about who can circulate petitions. In the appeal brief, the city, represented by Robbie Ashe, an attorney at the liberal Atlanta law firm Bondurant Mixson, argued not only against allowing non-Atlanta residents to circulate petitions but also that the whole referendum process was unconstitutional, an argument that should more reasonably be in state court rather than federal court. Nonetheless, the dispute remains pending in the 11th Circuit, allowing the city to build Cop City and not even starting the signature verification process, which might allow a referendum vote.  

It is ironic that a city that is justly proud of its civil rights credentials and its progressive values, has deployed so many tricks and tactics to avoid a referendum on Cop City. In fact, the city could simply withdraw its appeal and proceed with verifying signatures.

Meanwhile, another citizen-initiated referendum is moving forward. The Gullah-Geechee residents of Sapelo Island will be voting on a ballot initiative on October 1. These descendants of slaves living on the island are trying to stop a zoning change implemented by the McIntosh County Commissioners that would allow larger homes on portions of the island, threatening the long-time residents’ ability to afford to remain on the island. This article provides additional details. 

Another referendum may be in the works. Residents in the areas surrounding the new Hyundai plant are considering mounting a referendum over concerns that the plant will drain too much water from the aquifer. While the plant is in Bryan County, the petition would be in Bulloch County to void an agreement Bulloch has with Bryan County to supply a certain amount of water to the Hyundai plant.

“So when I look at the three ballot efforts in Georgia,” said Chris Melody Fields Figueredo, executive director of the national Ballot Initiative Strategy Center or BISC, “I see people taking democracy and putting it to what I believe the purpose of ballot measures and referendums are. Direct democracy is about people taking power into their own hands, especially when the government is not being responsive to them. Because this is new for Georgia, there's not a long history of referendums, and certainly y'all don't have the statewide initiative process. So what this says to me is, one, the people want to be able to make decisions for themselves, and two, they are mobilized when they don't see their elected officials responding to their hopes and dreams. They're taking power into their own hands.”

Figueredo added that the question for organizers and community members in Georgia is how do they work with the governing bodies at the county level and at the city level, in order to make sure that referendums don't get blocked. “This is an exciting period for Georgians to think about what tools, what training, what rulemaking they need to be able to use the referendum process more often, moving forward.”

And attorney Alex Joseph adds, “I'm hoping that future referendums when they do these signature gathering campaigns, whether or not the ultimate referendum is successful, and I hope they are. I think the signature gathering campaigns themselves can identify coalitions of people that can work to make real change in their local communities because they share values and share political will.

= Krista Brewer is a native Atlantan who has a professional background in writing, reporting and editing. For several decades she has closely followed Georgia politics, focusing on topics such as healthcare, voting and immigrant rights, and budget and environmental issues. Follow her @KristaRBrewer