Wednesday will dawn a little brighter in the Northwest, thanks to a new democracy reform measure that Emerald City voters passed tonight with more than 60 percent of the first round of ballots counted. Honest Elections Seattle, I-122, will empower everyday citizens and limit the power of big money interests in city elections.
I’ve written about the measure extensively:
- How it addresses the problem that only a tiny percentage of Seattle adults—typically ones who live in white, wealthy neighborhoods full of view homes—currently give to city campaigns and thus have greater influence on city policymaking
- How it tames lobbying money and bans “pay-to-play”
- How wildly cheap it is!
- How fraud-proof it is
- How it’s legal, even under the stranglehold decisions of Citizens United and McCutcheon and
- How it works (pretty simple, really!) for voters, candidates, and administrators
In fact, I led the policy design and drafting teams that put it together, vetting it with constitutional lawyers and democracy reform superstars near and far. The thing is airtight, a model for others, and now, it’s law.
It’s law because ordinary Seattle voters are tired of feeling like their representatives don’t hear them if they don’t have deep pockets. It’s law because candidates themselves feel they don’t get to talk with their constituents enough when they’re too busy dialing for dollars. It’s law because a small group of determined citizens got together and assembled a package of best-in-class ideas for returning power to where it belongs: regular people.
Sightline Institute dedicated resources to the fight for I-122 because we know that we can’t fix anything until we fix democracy. Big money in politics limits our success on every issue we work on, from oil trains to housing affordability to making polluters pay. It limits your influence on every issue you care about, too.
Sightline’s mission is to make the Northwest a global model of sustainability, to come up with great Cascadian solutions that others elsewhere can look to for inspiration. Honest Elections Seattle is just that, a game-changer that has already garnered national attention. Sightline is grateful to have played a part in tonight’s win, but even more, we’re thrilled to think of what progress it will unleash.
Congrats on convincing those who voted for I-122. I am a skeptic–mainly concerned that, like most such reforms, it will get manipulated in the wrong ways. But we shall see and I hope that it works out to an overall positive result.
Dont forget part of it has already been ruled un – constitutional in the 9th District
Court and Up Held by the US Supreme Court. Thanks Seattle for as the US
Supreme Court has said. You will violate my Free Speech Rights.
3 Cheers to the Money spent the canvasser’s and the paid petitioners that lied
to pass this legislation.
It will be fascinating to see how this plays out. Sightline, please follow-up with a comparison of pre- versus post-I-122 election results. My concern is that this system relies on the assumption that giving $100 to every voter will, on the whole, make them more informed or even interested in the political process. Otherwise, elections may simply become more of a popularity contest than they already are. If you have a slew of candidates or initiatives to vote on, because the playing field has been completely leveled, the tendency of the uninformed or dispassionate will be to cast votes based on familiarity or gut response to campaign slogans. It will also be interesting to see who actually votes compared to who gave their vouchers. Many may confuse assigning a voucher with actually casting a vote. Not the same thing.
Thank you, Alan, for your hard work to pass Honest Elections Seattle. This win restores some of my faith in humanity.
What I love about Honest Elections Seattle is that it will level the playing field and help prevent unequal access to speech, such as when a campaign (in a real example) bought all television advertising in one media market, effectively preventing certain speech by the opposing campaign.
Although I support a reversal of the Citizens United and McCutcheon decisions, I would have no problem with unlimited spending on campaigns, if (and here is the caveat) all candidates raised money for a common campaign finance pool and every candidate with enough people endorsing her or his candidacy had equal funds to spend on getting the message out. The key is to create fairness. The key is to level the playing field.
Congratulations Alan, Sightline, and Seattle!
So, when can we get this in Tacoma, too? 😉