Columbus voters will settle two questions about city council on November 3: whether council grows from nine members to 13, and whether the person representing each district should be elected only by the people who live there.
Council voted Monday to place two charter amendments on the fall ballot. The measures look almost identical at first glance, but the difference is crucial. One is a citizen-led amendment that council was required to send to voters once its petition was certified. The other is council’s own measure, which contains everything in the first and adds four citywide seats on top. Here’s what each one does.
Amendment 1 keeps nine members and changes who elects them
Proposed Charter Amendment No. 1, City Council District Elections, began as a petition from the Our City, Our Say coalition. By the coalition’s count, more than 250 volunteers collected over 23,000 signatures, and the Franklin County Board of Elections certified in July that the petition had more than enough valid ones. At that point the city charter required council to put the question in front of voters.
“Every community deserves to be represented by someone who knows them,” Sharon Kim of Asian American Midwest Progressives said in the coalition’s announcement of the referral, summing up its case as “one voice, one district.”
Every council member currently represents a numbered district but is elected citywide, a setup that has drawn criticism for years from residents who want representatives answerable to their own neighborhoods. Amendment 1 ends citywide voting for the nine district seats. Only the voters who live in a district would elect its member, and only they could petition to recall that member. Council would stay at nine seats. The city’s official summary has the full details.
Amendment 2 makes the same change, then adds four seats
Proposed Charter Amendment No. 2, City Council At-Large Complement, is council’s measure, introduced by Council President Shannon Hardin and Councilmember Rob Dorans. It includes the district-only voting from Amendment 1 and then grows council in two steps: two at-large seats added in the 2027 election and two more in 2029. Council would end up with 13 members: nine district seats and four citywide ones.
The measure, summarized here, also has the current district map redrawn by a citizen-led districting commission, a process expected to take until the 2029 election. Council appoints the commission’s members, and Dorans has said that appointment is where council’s involvement in drawing maps ends. The amendment also spells out how candidates reach the ballot: 150 signatures from within the district for a district seat, 250 signatures from across the city for an at-large run. Critics have pointed out this would dilute the new council members voted in by their neighborhoods.
Can both pass?
Yes. Council formally found that the two amendments don’t conflict, so both can take effect if voters approve both. Amendment 2 was written to include all of Amendment 1, and council members framed the two as complementary rather than competing. Hardin said at Monday’s meeting that the pairing recognizes “that neighborhoods matter and that the city as a whole matters,” as NBC4 reported.
The coalition largely agrees on the district question. Coalition member Maitland Neff said council’s amendment “does not contradict” the citizen measure on the number of districts, though the four at-large seats are council’s addition, not the coalition’s. The practical difference for voters comes down to size and structure: Amendment 1 is a nine-member council elected entirely by district, and Amendment 2 is a 13-member council that keeps four citywide seats in the mix.
Each amendment appears on the November 3 ballot as its own yes or no question. Columbus Navigator’s voter’s guide covers free rides to the polls and what to bring on Election Day.
