Let’s say you want to run for city council. You’ve got your eye on a well-funded incumbent like Council President Tim Burgess, but if you want to match him in fundraising—translation: signs, ads, direct mailers—you’re going to need a least a couple hundred thousand dollars. What’s the most efficient way to get that? Call up as many people as you can think of who’ll be able to cut you a check for $700, the maximum allowed under city law.
If you win and make it to the dais, those donors, the people with $700 to spare, are likely to have your ear. The organizers behind Honest Elections Seattle call this the “donor class.” And they want to loosen the grip they think that class holds on city hall.
Initiative 122—which the group has filed and will now have to gather at least 20,638 signatures for in order to get the measure on the fall ballot—would make some sweeping changes to the way Seattle city elections are funded. The most radical of those is the initiative’s “Democracy Vouchers” system, an idea that’s popular in campaign-reform circles but doesn’t actually exist anywhere in the United States.
As proposed in this initiative, the system would work like this:
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