When it comes to Columbus’s new district system for City Council, Eastside activist Jonathan Beard pulls no punches.
“I started calling this ‘Columbabama.’ This is repackaged 1950’s Jim Crow,” he says. “These fake districts were Shannon Hardin’s effort to confuse the ballot, claim responsiveness to an issue, and preserve white money and white voters’ influence over who represents Black folk in Columbus.”
In 2016, Beard unsuccessfully tried to bring true representative districts to Columbus. His non-profit Everyday People For Positive Change spent $13,000 while the City spent over $1 million to distort and then defeat the citizen-initiated vote.
“Our proposal simply sought to enlarge the size of council and bring real council districts to the city. Columbus is the only big city in America to retain an all-at-large election system,” he says.