City of Atlanta officials today outlined the process they will use to verify the petition lines that have been collected by citizens who are advocating for a referendum on the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center.
“In an effort to ensure that adequate resources are dedicated to this project, the City of Atlanta – through the adoption of the Atlanta City Council – has developed a step-by-step process to conduct the audit of the documents, of which the signature verification process may be a critical element,” said Interim Municipal Clerk Vanessa Waldon. “We are committed to a transparent process that meets the requirements of the law and builds public confidence and trust.”
The process used by the Office of the Municipal Clerk will entail four steps with the guiding principles of conducting the process in a manner that preserves the ability of the public to participate in the democratic process. Atlanta City Council says it hopes that this process will maintain the integrity of the verification process, the accuracy of the results, and a commitment to transparency.
Here are the fours steps the Atlanta city council has outlined:
- Petition Intake Process. When the petition is presented to Interim Municipal Clerk Waldon, she will affirmatively establish how many boxes of signature pages have been turned in and seal them in front of the petitioners. She will then take the sealed boxes to a secure vault in the Clerk’s office, where they will be kept secure until they are scanned.
- Scanning/Processing. Once received, the boxes will be individually opened and their contents scanned to create an electronic image of every page. While the petition pages that were issued have unique, sequential numbers on the bottom, we do not presume that we will receive them back in perfect numerical sequence – there may be gaps, for instance, or overlap between the sequences present in different boxes. Accordingly, the City…
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