In the previous article in this series about Washington’s Citizens’ Initiative 1464, we mapped in-district giving to winning Washington state legislative candidates. But mapping Washington’s legislative districts geographically creates a misleading visual distortion of the data. Despite the fact that each legislative district contains nearly the same number of people, sparsely populated rural districts are … Read more
[button link='{“url”:”http://www.sightline.org/2016/10/24/following-the-money-in-washington-state-elections-part-2/”,”title”:”Read next: Following the Money in Washington State Elections, Part 1″}’] Washingtonians know that big money plays a big role in politics, but they may not know exactly where the money comes from in state legislative races. In the previous article in this series, we showed that special interests dominate campaign funding in Washington … Read more
[button link='{“url”:”http://www.sightline.org/2016/10/24/following-the-money-in-washington-state-elections-part-2/”,”title”:”Read next: Following the Money in Washington State Elections, Part 2″}’] Voters of all political affiliations in Washington State know that big money has an outsized influence in state elections and political processes. That’s why the Washington Government Accountability Act, I-1464 on next month’s ballot, would restore balance to Evergreen State elections by lifting … Read more
At a recent town hall-style meeting about money in politics, a speaker asked the audience how many of them thought they themselves could run for political office. Absolutely no one raised their hand. Then the speaker asked, what if a campaign funding system made it possible for you to raise money from regular people, even … Read more
In our last two articles in this series, we described the Washington Government Accountability Act’s tough new rules for reducing lobbyists and contractors’ influence in Olympia and for boosting transparency in elections, so that voters have easy access to the information they need about their candidates. In this article, we detail another voter-empowering component of … Read more
In 2014, Tim Sheldon and Irene Bowling ran a tight race for the Washington State Senate seat to represent the state’s 35th District, covering Mason and parts of Kitsap and Thurston counties. In addition to the candidates’ own spending, Political Action Committees (PACs) spent over a million dollars attempting to influence the campaign. These expenditures … Read more
In 2012, the Spokane-based electric power utility Avista donated $92,000 via its main lobbyist, Collins Sprague, to influence state candidate races in Washington. That year, lobbied by Sprague, the Washington legislature passed an amendment to the state’s Clean Energy Initiative that loosened definitions of clean energy to include energy produced from older biomass plants, such as … Read more
Over the last decade, Americans have become increasingly convinced that their government is for sale to the highest bidder, rather than an instrument of the people. Even in Washington State, PACs, parties, unions, and other organizations give about three-quarters of the money for state legislative campaigns, while individuals—We the People—contribute only about one-quarter. This November, … Read more
