More like a Democracy Perversion Program. Burn your vouchers immediately upon receiving.

3% return rate last election. Mainly white, wealthier, home owning voters returning them.

So yeah, “democracy” vouchers

It is money that people did not earn, and can not spend.

Of course no one actually values it.

What happens to the unused funds? I'm assuming there is more money in the program than what gets allocated to candidates.

@2, “Politicians taxing it's citizens...”

Read harder, Jack:

“The program was created by ballot initiative in 2015...”

And, much to @1’s dismay, completely vetted and approved by our courts.

@6: “What happens to the unused funds?”

Hopefully, all funds from any unallocated Democracy Vouchers will be banked toward the day when our entire selection process for our public office-holders will be fully funded by the tax-paying public. That will effectively end our current practice, wherein anyone with sufficient cash to buy influence can legally bribe an office-holder.

@9: A fully-funded election system wouldn’t eliminate other expenditures, it would just make them noise on the signal.

On the way to that happy state, getting rid of CM Sawant would be a great use of our Democracy Vouchers this year, I agree.

@10: So, you just brazenly lied to make your point @2, then? Good to know.

Can't wait to allocated all of my household's vouchers (three voters) to whomever is opposing Kshama Sawant.

@13: You wrote the “politicians” are “taxing” us, @2. In reality, we’re taxing ourselves, and allocating the money ourselves; as noted concerning CM Sawant, they can refuse to accept it if they like, but that decision follows after ours. They can’t get any of this money unless we send it to them.

Unless its money explicitly coming from the citizen to the candidate, it has no moral value. Using public funds for arbitrary preference distribution is inherently wrong because it robs the spirit of democracy from the citizen and makes it a form of depraved gambling.

@1 & @15: I’m sure our Supreme Court wishes you’d pointed that out to them before they made their decision. Now they’ll have to start all over again!

Or maybe you could re-consider your position in light of their actual decision, on the possibility they might be right?

(Which of those two outcomes seems more likely? Yeah, I agree, neither...)

Before you spend all that money on pricey champagne, note that First Amendment is thankfully a US Constitutional issue. SCOTUS has the last word, not the Socialist Supreme Court of Washington State. So let's wait til the fat lady sings!

Anyway, Sawant has raised 4 times the maximum cap of $75k, mostly from her out of state Komrades. The vouchers are really leveling the playfield, lol!

@16: You're being impertinent, again.

Boy I knew what the first comment would be. Yep, you burn yours, that'll show me!

@18: “So, how are we not being Taxed?“
No one ever said we were not being taxed. I was referring to your false statement @2, that “politicians” were taxing us. No politicians are taxing us to supply Democracy Vouchers. We are taxing us.

@15: “Unless its money explicitly coming from the citizen to the candidate, it has no moral value.”

Then you must be reveling in the moral value provided by our Democracy Vouchers. Each voucher a citizen allocates to a candidate is absolutely “...money explicitly coming from the citizen to the candidate.”

@20: “Why is my tax money given to someone running for Seattle City Council who is not in my District and I can't vote for or against?”

Why is your tax money paving streets in Seattle and roads in Othello that you never see? Why is your tax money educating other people’s children?

@19: “impertinent”

That word does not mean what you believe it means.