A coalition last week filed citizens’ Initiative 122 in Seattle that assembles into a single package some of the toughest corruption prevention and clean-election laws found anywhere in the United States. It also adds one startlingly original feature: a campaign funding system called Democracy Vouchers, which gives every voter $100 of coupons to hand over to the candidates of their choice. The idea is so simple and revolutionary it might just start changing politics across Cascadia and beyond. If the coalition can gather about 30,000 signatures, which seems likely, the measure will appear on ballots in November. It stands a good chance of passing.
What’s in the initiative?
Honest Elections Seattle closes the revolving door: City elected officials and their top aides may not lobby their former colleagues for three years after leaving office.
Honest Elections Seattle tightens the cap on big money, lowering the limits per contributor down to $500. That’s among the lowest limits in the United States.
Honest Elections Seattle clamps down on secret money. It accelerates disclosure of financial contributions, moving toward real-time transparency for electronic contributions. It stiffens penalties for disclosure violations, and it cracks down on candidates raising money on the side for PACs and dark-money “independent expenditure” campaigns.
Honest Elections Seattle shuts off the cash circuit currently flowing between elected officials and the companies that lobby them. When it’s law, elected officials will no longer be allowed to take campaign money from companies that spend big on city hall lobbyists. It acts on the principle that elected officials shouldn’t take money from companies that have a financial stake in city decisions big enough to justify a lobbying line in their budgets.
Honest Elections Seattle also turns off the nozzle of contributions from companies that bid on and win big contracts with the city. It acts on the principle that elected officials shouldn’t take money from the firms that profit by doing business with the city.
Honest Elections Seattle makes campaign money more transparent than ever. It will speed up reporting of contributions to the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission (SEEC). It will require candidates to disclose much more about their personal financial holdings and wealth, including their net worth, than ever before.
Honest Elections Seattle will call the bluff of faux-grassroots initiative peddlers. When a petition mercenary approaches a Seattle voter at the PCC with a clipboard, that voter will know right away—by reading a prominent badge—if he or she is facing a volunteer or a “PAID SIGNATURE GATHERER.”
And finally, the game changer: Honest Elections Seattle will give to every voter in the city Democracy Vouchers worth $100, which they can contribute to candidates who agree to play by the Honest Elections rules: no contributions from anyone of more than $250 ($500 for mayor), limits on total campaign spending, no fundraising for outside groups or campaigns, and penalties for benefiting from spending by outside campaigns. This voucher program will be much simpler than you might imagine, and it’s screamingly cheap. The City of Seattle’s budget is about $4.8 billion. Honest Elections Seattle costs under $3 million a year—about 0.065 percent of the budget.
Where we go from here
Signature gathering for Honest Elections Seattle citizens’ initiative will not commence until the City Clerk and City Attorney have finished processing the initiative, which will take a few weeks. That pause will give me time to write another article or two detailing how Democracy Vouchers work.
Full disclosure: I am far from neutral. I led the team of volunteers who designed the initiative and drafted its legal language. I also coordinated three rounds of peer review by Seattle coalition members and a network of constitutional lawyers and democracy reformers at national nonprofits such as the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU, the Campaign Legal Center, Every Voice, Public Citizen, and Represent.US (whose American Anti-Corruption Act was the single most influential model we drew from).
(The Honest Elections Seattle campaign website is published, though it is remains in development. Still, if you are interested, you can sign up for updates there.)
Weezy
You’re barking up the wrong tree, Alan. These changes amount to nothing but putting lipstick on a pig.
Voting for local legislators goes against the urbanist trend in Seattle-area politics. You of all people know that! We’ve been on the right track here in the heart of Cascadia for twenty years now – appointive boards! We should be putting more of our eggs into that basket.
Why should the legislative body of Seattle – it’s city council – even be elected? The trend around here is to do away with voting for and against municipal legislators. THAT is progressive!!!
The Seattle Popular Monorail Authority had an appointive board. Sound Transit has an appointive board. That is the wave of the progressive future. Ride the wave! You always are pleased as punch with whatever Sound Transit’s unelected board does . . . especially in terms of the financing policies it sets. You’ve never said one bad thing about those.
Why not just let the King County Executive appoint all of Seattle’s councilmembers? That would be better in our fast-paced modern world. The King County Executive already appoints more than half of Sound Transit’s boardmembers. Why shouldn’t he (or she) appoint people to the Seattle city council as well?
Everybody reading what you write thinks Sound Transit’s appointive-board structure is beyond excellent. Nobody in Seattle’s power structure thinks Sound Transit’s board should be directly-elected. The oligarchy form is streamlined and efficient.
Sound Transit’s board was set up to be controlled by political appointees by no less than Gary Locke, Maria Cantwell, Dwight Peltz and other democrat luminaries when they were legislators in Olympia in 1992. They were the legislators who sponsored the “regional transit authority” enabling legislation bill. With a pedigree like that – and what we’ve seen out of Sound Transit’s board – it’s obvious Seattle’s city council should evolve and become an appointive board, one that is controlled by appointees of the King County Executive. We could have a “success breeding success” situation.
We shouldn’t tweak peoples’ power to vote for and against city legislators. We should eliminate it. The state legislature saw fit to ensure a supermajority of Sound Transit’s boardmembers always would be political appointees. Everybody at Sightline thinks Sound Transit is most awesome. That’s what Seattle should have as well – legislators who are political appointees!
Toby Thaler
At first I thought you were serious. But by the time I got to “The oligarchy form is streamlined and efficient.” I realized you must really be practicing the high art of satire. Otherwise, why? Do you really like this?
Weezy
Yes it’s satire.
You understand Sound Transit is an oligarchy, right? By statute (RCW 81.112.040) the three county executives appoint a supermajority of the 18 boardmembers. That means the county executives are oligarchs, and Sound Transit is an oligarchy.
Here’s the rub: the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment prohibits states from delegating legislative powers to appointive boards. Our state’s legislature messed up when it did exactly that in 1992 (that’s when Sound Transit’s enabling legislation was adopted).
That’s why no other municipality in the country has an appointive board and anywhere near the legislative powers of Sound Transit. It’s unconstitutional for those political appointees to be wielding all those governmental policy-making powers.
RDPence
Over-the-top hyperbole from a regular generator of diatribes against Sound Transit. The only appointed boards we have are for special-purpose governmental units like transit authorities, and of course those boards are appointed by — elected officials!
Weezy
The Junior College District in the “Hadley” opinion from the Supreme Court was a special purpose governmental unit. It was unconstitutional precisely because people subject to its governmental powers could not vote for or against those policy-makers.
Let’s do it this way, Roger . . . try arguing that the delegation of the broad range of essentially-unchecked legislative powers to the RTA board complies with the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Good luck. Hint: none of the constitutional law experts Alan consulted with respect to his initiative will be able to help you out. Know any lawyers? They’ll tell you I’m right — Sound Transit has an unconstitutional form of government.