Council OK's "Stop Cop City" referendum rules

Details: The ordinance, approved by a 10-5 vote, would create a process for municipal referendums requiring the city to verify petition signatures with the official state voter registration database.

• The legislation will take effect either when Mayor Andre Dickens signs it, or "by operation of Law," which is at the end of the day the Tuesday following a council meeting.
• Dickens does have the power to veto it.

Yes, but: Activists speaking during public comment said the amended version of Council member Liliana Bakhtiari's legislation left room for officials to use signature-matching — a process widely criticized by voting rights advocates as discriminatory.

• They called the change another bad-faith effort by officials to move the goal posts and stymy efforts to block the center's construction, which is tentatively set for completion at year's end.

The big picture: The coalition opposing the training center expects the city to use the new rules to verify the signatures they submitted in August, the group said in a statement.

• The process is currently in limbo while the city appeals a judge's ruling that would give the activists more time to collect signatures.

What they're saying: Bakhtiari told her colleagues the amended legislation is "not my original paper" and tried to remove the signature-verification step and give City Hall and voters more time to resolve rejected signatures in a "curing" process.

• The city's law department said removing that step would violate the Georgia Constitution.
• Before voting against her own ordinance, Bakhtiari said the "verification as it is listed, to me, can still create issues" for people with disabilities.
• "I have done all that I can to try to find a path forward," she said.

The other side: Councilman Michael Julian Bond said the legislation does not focus on "signature matching" and that the process would rely on human review, which activists demanding the vote called a "soft" version.

Meanwhile: Three people who conducted a sit-in protest before the meeting were detained by officers, according to a social media post.

• The Atlanta Police Department told Axios that no arrests were made.