In Seattle Elections, Dark Money Follows Competition, Not Democracy Vouchers

Critics of Seattle’s democracy vouchers often point to one trend as evidence of the program’s fallibility: a rise in local “independent expenditures”—that is, dark money campaign funding vehicles like super PACs. Despite their upsides, critics say, vouchers have simply pushed millions of big-donor dollars from official campaigns into less transparent and accountable forms, rendering the program a waste of money. 

Sightline led the design of the Democracy Voucher Program and has promoted and studied it for more than a decade. So I wanted to check this accusation—and found it unwarranted. 

Independent expenditures are up in many cities across the United States, democracy vouchers or not. And preliminary academic analysis controlling for other factors confirms the program has had no effect on this kind of outside spending. 

Instead, Seattle’s experience shows that this innovative public financing model is delivering on its promise of more people-powered elections—even if US laws hamstring the city’s options for addressing every dark money dollar. 

Critique: Vouchers push special-interest spending out of public view 

From the inception of the program, opponents raised fears of spending from outside groups—special interests not affiliated with official campaigns. The 2015 opposition statement against I-122 (the ballot initiative that created the program), for example, suggested that it “[p]ushes more money into less accountable independent expenditures, which I-122 does nothing to limit or reform.” Recent news articles continue to reference the explosion of independent expenditures as the flip side of an otherwise markedly successful endeavor. 

It’s true that the city (and its voucher program) cannot limit this type of spending, although it can and has taken some steps to curtail or highlight certain offenders, such as banning foreign-influenced corporations from political spending and strengthening transparency and disclosure laws. Independent expenditures are dollars from interest groups that are explicitly prohibited from coordinating with candidate campaigns (hence the “independent” moniker). These entities can be political action committees (PACs), super PACs, or other “dark money” groups, which all have unlimited spending but different allowances on the funding they can accept.  

The US Supreme Court prohibited limitations on such spending as far back as Buckley v. Valeo in 1976. It then kicked the door wide open for corporate spending in Citizens United v. FEC in 2010, giving wealthy individuals and groups carte blanche to sway elections. And research shows that these funds do influence at least some policies.  

It’s also true that independent expenditures have risen in Seattle in recent years. But that doesn’t mean they’ve grown because of the voucher program. 

Data: Independent spending has risen throughout the US 

To test the allegation that the voucher program pushed political dollars out of official campaigns and into the “dark money” arena, Sightline turned to the leading independent US scholar of the program, Professor Jennifer Heerwig of SUNY–Stony Brook. Her research casts doubt on the claim, showing that independent expenditures have increased in many cities in recent years—some much more dramatically than in Seattle.  

Independent expenditures, increasingly from ideological super PACs, have exploded in US politics over the past decade, including infiltrating local elections in the years directly following the 2010 Citizens United decision. Contributions to super PACs grew more than 30-fold from $40.1 million in 2012 to $1.3 billion in 2024, according to one report. According to another, spending doubled from 2020 to 2024 alone. Notably, these dollars are difficult to track, and reported figures likely underestimate the growth. 

Seattle and other nearby cities are not immune to this trend, nor is Seattle uniquely vulnerable to these outside campaigns. To study whether Seattle’s independent expenditures increase bore any connection with the city’s democracy vouchers, Professor Heerwig and researcher Anna Campbell collected data on independent expenditures in large California and Washington cities (see chart below). They found fluctuation in independent spending in each city’s mayoral races; but compared to Seattle, the cities of Oakland, San Diego, and Spokane showed similar or even starker increases in these independent expenditures in recent years.¹

These trends suggest that democracy vouchers did not themselves uniquely generate a new era of outside spending in Seattle elections. Instead, this trend prevails across the US and in other comparable cities in the western US. A separate and more limited study from Common Cause California similarly found that contribution limits on their own (which are also a component of the Democracy Voucher Program) do not increase independent expenditures. 

Heerwig followed up with a preliminary regression analysis, which supports this reading as well: “Conditional on being the kind of city that has independent expenditures in local races and controlling for the effect of competition, the Democracy Voucher Program does not seem to increase the level of independent expenditures,” she told Sightline.²

In other words, if you account for the other relevant factors (like competition) that affect outside spending, democracy vouchers did not cause any significant change. 

Nuance: The indirect effect of competition 

Accounting for the level of competition is particularly important to this analysis. Interest groups tend to spend more when elections are seen as more competitive, like in New York City’s many-candidate 2025 mayoral race or for consequential offices such as April 2025’s judicial race in Wisconsin.  

Or, say, in places where the keys to a competitive race are available to more candidates, which democracy vouchers have offered in Seattle. And it’s true: Seattle’s Democracy Voucher Program has increased competition, with more candidates running and decreased incumbent vote margins. This finding corroborates prior studies that reached similar conclusions: public financing programs increase electoral competition. Most voters view this as a good thing: they get more real choices, and their support of a candidate they like matters to the outcome of the race. 

In short, that increased competition may have inadvertently led to an increase in independent expenditures, but it’s not a direct effect of money being pushed out of the public realm. 

Takeaway: Democracy vouchers do tip the scales for healthier local elections 

Contrary to fears from critics, appropriate comparison data shows that vouchers have not pushed big dollars from candidates’ coffers into super PACs. 

While democracy vouchers haven’t seemed to influence the flow of independent expenditures up or down in Seattle, they have changed the ecosystem of local campaigning. They’ve enabled many thousands more Seattle residents to donate to city elections, encouraged candidates to reach out to more voters, and even increased voter turnout. Democracy vouchers have successfully curtailed big campaign donations from a select few wealthy donors in favor of many smaller donations from everyday people. This outreach means voters have other information sources besides a barrage of expensive ads, so independent spending might matter less. 

As the Democracy Voucher Program continues to shape the landscape of Seattle elections—this year and, if voters approve the levy renewal this August, for at least another ten years— independent expenditures are assumably sure to persist. But so too, hopefully, will the newly empowered voices of thousands more Seattleites using their democracy vouchers to propel candidates they believe in. 

Thanks to Dr. Jennifer Heerwig and Anna Campbell for their research and data analysis. 

Note on methodology for the Heerwig/Campbell analysis: The original sampling frame was the largest cities (by population) in California and Washington, excepting San Jose as it has not yet digitized its campaign finance records. Long Beach had no independent expenditures in its mayoral races, so it was not plotted. 

Everett, Fresno, Kent, Sacramento, Tacoma, and Vancouver all had much lower levels of spending per capita than Seattle and were not included in the primary comparison chart (view the full data and charts here). 

In Washington, data was downloaded from the Washington State Public Disclosure Commission (PDC). In California, data was downloaded or requested from each city’s city clerk or campaign finance board.