Seattle Public Campaign Financing Initiative Passes

Seattle's public campaign financing Initiative I-122 passed easily on Tuesday. It should prove to be an excellent experiment in campaign finance vouchers, an idea that has been batted about at the federal level, as well.

Here's how it works. Each election cycle (two years) the city's ethics commission will mail four $25 vouchers to each registered voter, to be given, if they choose, to any candidate for mayor, city council, or city attorney. The vouchers can be mailed or submitted online. They cannot be traded or purchased.

Due to the U.S. Supreme Court majority's interpretation of the Constitution, candidates may choose to participate or not participate. If they choose to participate, in return for the ability to accept vouchers, they agree to follow rules, such as participating in three public debates and accepting a lower expenditure limit.

The vouchers are to be funded by additional property taxes.

It will be interesting to see how many residents actually give their vouchers to candidates, whom they give them to (e.g., mostly to incumbents or challengers), when they give them, as well as how many and which kind of candidates participate, how candidates seek to obtain vouchers for their campaigns (canvasing, events, ads), and how the voucher system affects other sorts of campaign contributions and independent expenditures.

For all candidates, the initiative also lowers the contribution limit from $700 to $500 and prohibits them from soliciting contributions from any person or company with at least $250,000 in city contracts or $5,000 in city lobbying expenses. I like the latter idea, but $250,000 is too high to include most professionals and consultants, who tend to be important contributors and to get no-bid contracts.

But there may be impediments to the program working, as there have been in most local government public financing programs. There is likely to be a suit to try to have the program, or an essential part of it, declared unconstitutional. Major candidates may refuse to participate. There may be issues about funding the vouchers (higher property taxes are not usually popular over the long run). And there could be an attempt to underfund the ethics commission, which is assigned with administering the program, and already has its hands full.

The only other problem is that, since Seattle already has a good ethics program as well as good election, transparency, and lobbying laws, a public financing program may not change things as much as it might change most other cities. That is, Seattle is not the best guinea pig for such a program.

But let's hope that opponents will allow the program to proceed, if not just for Seattle, but also for the rest of the country, which might learn something about how such a program works in practice.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics