Columbus City Attorney Zach Klein's office said one of the two proposals to change how the city elects council members is "legally insufficient," while giving the green light to collect signatures for the second proposal.
Both proposals would require the nine city council members to only get votes from within their districts rather than from the entire city. A group led by Columbus resident Jonathan Beard also aims to create a new district map, arguing the current map racially gerrymanders the districts to be mostly white.
Beard's idea was blocked by the city attorney's office. Klein's office pointed out several issues with Beard's proposal, including how the language as written would eliminate Columbus City Council for several months in 2028.
Our City Our Say only wants to change from an at-large district system to a true ward system. That proposal is being pushed by former City Council candidate Jesse Vogel, former mayoral candidate Joe Motil and the grassroots progressive group Columbus Stand Up, which is led by former U.S. Senate candidate Morgan Harper.
The group announced Klein's office would let them proceed on social media, which a City Council spokesperson confirmed to WOSU. The group intends to collect 20,000 signatures to make the November 2026 ballot.
Frustrations over the city's current system boiled over when Vogel lost November's election to Councilmember Tiara Ross. Vogel won more votes within the boundaries of city council's District 7, but lost the race citywide to Ross.
Beard said he isn't sure he will resubmit his proposal, which he said he crafted with the help of several other leaders in Columbus' Black community. Beard said he can't support the Our City Our Say amendment and argued it keeps in place a map that violates the U.S. Civil Rights Act.
"Since the other group has signaled that they're not supportive of voting rights for Black folk, I think right now we're going to lean more towards city council, and tell council we need something that works for all the people of Columbus, not just white folks who lost election to a Black woman," Beard said.
Our City Our Say also had several Black organizers involved in its campaign.
Beard now says his group submitted the effort as a "pressure test" to see if under law, a petition could change both the district system and propose a new map.
In a letter obtained by WOSU, Klein's office explained to city council that Beard's proposal met the idea of having a "single subject," but it had a number of issues that keep it from being approved.
In Beard's proposal, the current council would have to leave office by January 2028. Beard outlines how the city would hold primary elections for the new seats in 2027, but wouldn't hold a general election until some time in 2028.
"The language contains what is likely a drafting error, the effect of which is to potentially leave the city without a council," Klein's office wrote.
The city attorney's office said that not all of the other issues rise to a level of a "fatal flaw" but are "errors the overall effect of which is to obscure how the amendment seeks to change current provisions of the city charter."
One of the issues Klein's office points out is that the proposed map Beard's team created is "blurry" with unclear geographic boundaries and an inset that contains data but includes no key.
Klein's office said more data about the map was submitted separately from the legal petition, but that it is unclear how the data could be distributed properly when soliciting petition signatures.
Klein's office also criticized the petition for allowing the petition committee to further define its districting plan after the fact.
"There is no limitation whatsoever on the power of the petition committee – none of whom have been either elected or appointed by an elected official – to provide ongoing changes to the initial plan. Nor is there a mechanism provided for holding the petition committee accountable for these changes," Klein's office wrote.
When asked by WOSU, Beard didn't address the legal problems Klein's office pointed to. Instead, he criticized the Our City Our Say proposal and called on city council to come up with a new solution. He also criticized city council for creating the current system in the first place.
"Will they do it? I don't know. If they don't do it again, it just shows one more example of how they're, you know, flawed and bought off. The system doesn't work," Beard said.
Beard said he can't see supporting the Our City Our Say proposal. Beard said that he doesn't have confidence fair maps will be drawn when the maps are required to be redrawn after the 2030 U.S. Census.
"You can never trust a politician to draw their own maps. They're going to draw them to eliminate competition," Beard said. "We saw this time and again when they drew these stupid a** maps. The first thing that happened was the council members scattered so they wouldn't have to run against each other, they physically moved and changed addresses."
Beard said regular people should be trusted to draw maps, but Beard's own proposal didn't seek public input.
"Last time, what happened is they have held this public input process but they didn't listen to anybody. They drew these crazy maps that combine, you know, the near east side with Grove City," Beard said.
Beard said voters should ultimately have a say in whether a new map is approved.
