Seattle’s election vouchers could shake up U.S. campaign funding process

Whether you agree with their political views or not, you have to hand it to
the people of Seattle – they’re a feisty bunch of progressives determined to
break down barriers.

On Tuesday, Seattle voters approved a groundbreaking system of funding election
campaigns that will level the playing field for candidates by giving the public
“democracy vouchers” that will be used to contribute small amounts to their
favorite contenders for local offices.

Sounds a bit radical, but what would you expect from a city that recently
boosted its minimum wage for workers to $15 an hour?

Here’s how it works: Four tax-funded vouchers worth $25 each will be distributed
to voters to donate to candidates participating in the public funding system. Participating
candidates may continue to raise money from both traditional cash sources and
the publicly-funded democracy vouchers, as long as they comply with a cash
contribution limit of $250 per donor, plus spending caps.

Empowering the voters
The spending caps consist of $800,000 total for the mayoral primary and
general elections; $300,000 for at-large City Council candidates; and $150,000
for district City Council candidates.

The idea here, of course, is to encourage candidates to participate in the public
funding system and to give the voters a sense of empowerment and participation
by letting them put money into the hands of the candidates they support. In
some manner, it’s almost like casting a monetary vote before Election Day voting
on ballots.

Beyond marginalizing the impact of big business and labor, supporters of
public financing believe that it will result in more substantive election
campaigns with far fewer gimmicks and personal attacks. After all, the
electorate will not react well if a candidate is using tax dollars to pay for
nasty or misleading campaign ads.

Here’s perhaps the most surprising aspect: This $3 million system will be
funded by a local property tax levy that, in Michigan terms, amounts to about
0.010 of a mill. Voters across our state routinely approve tax plans that call
for 1, 2 or 3 mills. This democracy voucher tax is 100 times less than a l-mill
levy.

At its most restrictive, this “Honest Elections” initiative
also will limit donations from city contractors, regulated businesses and their
lobbyists, and it would speed disclosure of campaign donations.

From California to Maine to Florida
Also on Tuesday, voters in Maine backed an initiative that updated their state’s system of
publicly financed elections.

Another victory for campaign finance reform came in San Francisco, where embraced
a lobbying reform proposal that lays the groundwork for further changes. These
reform wins follow on the heels of the 2014 vote in Tallahassee, Fla., to enact
a limited public financing system in the city and upgrade
lobbying and ethics laws.

Paul Blumenthal, a liberal columnist for The Huffington Post, sees momentum building toward numerous local and state ballot initiatives in 2016 due to the
ongoing backlash against the 2010 Citizens United ruling by the U.S. Supreme
Court that opened the door to unlimited campaign contributions from wealthy
individuals, corporations and labor.

“The push for post-Citizens United reform at the state level owes its
success not only to the design of getting the issue before a public primed to
vote against big money, but also to the initiatives providing an affirmative
path to reform through empowering the average citizen.

“Instead of focusing on passing initiatives that seek to limit, reformers
are pushing policies to increase the role of small donors and non-donors in
the funding of elections through public financing. These policies are often
combined, as was the case in Seattle, with a package of ethics and lobbying
reforms supported by conservative voters also concerned about the imbalance in
government favoring the wealthy and well-connected.

“As lawmakers tend
to percolate up from city councils to state legislatures and into Congress,
reformers hope that their success at creating state- and local-level public
financing systems will create a generation of lawmakers coming to Washington
with experience in a public system and not in the current privately financed
system. These lawmakers would be more willing to help create such a system at
the federal level.”