Seattle Civics 101: Democracy Vouchers
Hey Seattle, did you get your democracy vouchers?
Here’s how to shell out your government-sponsored $100 of campaign contributions.
The Democracy Voucher Program goes a long way towards equalizing the political capital of an economically disparate populace, and it’s so easy to use them. Plus, they really don’t look that great on your fridge.
In November 2015 Seattle voted in favor of I-122, the Honest Elections Seattle Initiative, and thus instigated a series of election reforms including the creation of the Democracy Voucher Program. This is the first program in the nation that allocates money its citizens can use to directly contribute to a political campaign.
How do they work?
Democracy vouchers are socialized donations for city political campaigns. The city allocates four $25 vouchers to each qualifying citizen, which can then be sent to the participating campaign(s) of their choice. You can give your favorite candidate all four vouchers, summing $100, or you can divvy it up in $25 increments any way that you like. You don’t have to live in the district the candidate is running in, and you can give your vouchers to any participant in the program. Participating candidates can be found here.
Using democracy vouchers is pretty simple: the vouchers get mailed to you, you write the name of the candidate you want to support on each voucher, then sign your name, put them in the provided envelope, and stick it in the mailbox. Postage is included, so don’t worry about finding a stamp. The latest round of vouchers should have been mailed to you a few months ago, but if you don’t know where yours are, never fear: you can get replacement vouchers here.
You can submit your vouchers anytime up until the end of the race (end of November for 2019 city council elections), but the sooner you submit them the sooner the campaign can use them. If you don’t submit your vouchers or if your candidate can’t use the contributions (because they hit their funding limit or pulled out of the race) the funds get rolled over into the next election cycle.
Who gets to submit democracy vouchers?
If you are registered to vote you probably have already gotten you vouchers, if you moved or haven’t registered to vote and want to, you can register to vote here.
You do not have to be a registered voter to get democracy vouchers. You do have to be a Seattle resident, at least 18 years old, and either a US national or a green cardholder. You do not need a permanent residential address. If you are not registered to vote you’ll need to apply using the Democracy Voucher Application. If English isn’t your preferred language it’s also available in 14 other languages.
Budget and Transparency
The program is paid for by a property tax that costs the average homeowner about $8 per year (raising $3 million). Money that isn’t used rolls over into the next year. Candidates that receive vouchers can spend it on campaign costs but not on personal expenses, their own salary, to pay their family, or to reimburse contributors. They also can’t share the money with any other campaign or committee — it has to go to their political campaign.
Each voucher signature is validated against a signature on file (from state voter registration or ID etc.) before the funds are sent to the campaign to prevent fraud.
The program is set up such that candidates who want in on this pot of grassroots funds have to meet certain qualifications and agree to run a grassroots style campaign by only accepting small donations of less than $250 per donation. They also have to keep a total campaign spending budget of $150,000 (for city council, mayoral candidates have a higher limit). To dig in deeper into the rules of participation check out the candidate resources provided by the City of Seattle.
The program is pretty transparent, and you can download a copy of the database of voucher submissions here as a .csv file. If you choose to use democracy vouchers your name will be made publicly available to anyone who downloads the database, but it doesn’t show any contact information, just first and last name along with the allocations. All contributions are public information.
If you’ve got questions there are a lot of options for getting in touch with the program including the usual social media places like Facebook and Twitter as well as a dedicated phone number, email, and fax all of which is plastered all over the democracy voucher site.
If you want to get seriously into the nitty-gritty, here’s where you can find the legislation itself, but for the most part, it’s pretty straight forward: fill it out, mail it in.
All in all, this is a good program with a lot of potential to help even the political playing field in our incredibly inequitable city. The politics of Seattle affect everyone here, so it’s only right that everyone should have influence over who runs it. This program gives (nearly) all of Seattle the opportunity to participate in democracy, regardless of income, and for that congrats are owed. Good job Seattle, keep pushing, there’s more to do.
