Seattle is poised to continue its experiment in public campaign financing. Voters on Tuesday appear to have renewed the city’s democracy vouchers program, which provides each adult Seattle resident with four $25 vouchers they can donate to local candidates of their choice.
The ballot measure, which leads by 17 percentage points in the count as of Friday evening, will generate $4.5 million in property taxes a year to fund the program for the next decade. Had it failed, the tax levy that voters approved in 2015 would have expired, winding down the democracy vouchers.
Supporters celebrated the measure’s success, which comes eight years after Seattle first implemented the program. Since then, studies have found that the vouchers have strengthened the influence of everyday residents on local politics and allowed a wider array of candidates to launch campaigns, decreasing their reliance on big-money donors.
“Seattle showed the country what’s possible when we commit to making local elections more inclusive and accountable,” said Cinthia Illan-Vazquez, executive director of the Washington Bus, an organization that promotes civic engagement among youth. “At a time when federal courts and extremist politicians are attacking voting rights and blocking campaign finance reforms, Seattle voters just sent a powerful message: We will protect our democracy and keep building toward a system that truly represents all of us.” . . .
Proponents of the program also highlight how it has increased the number and diversity of people donating to local elections, drawing in Seattleites who otherwise may be disengaged from city politics. According to a University of Washington study, over the first two cycles of the program, Seattle saw a 350 percent increase in the number of unique donors.
Another, more recent study, conducted by researchers at Stony Brook University and Georgetown University, found that the donors using democracy vouchers were more likely to be young and lower-income.
These changes are making local elections more competitive and creating a tougher road for incumbents to win reelection, according to the University of Washington study. Alex Gallo Brown, campaign manager of Katie Wilson, the progressive mayoral candidate who is currently leading Mayor Bruce Harell in Tuesday’s primary, thinks that democracy vouchers were critical to Wilson’s success.