Elections Experiment Fails to Keep Big Money Out of Seattle Politics
governing | August 01, 2017
After Seattle voters approved first-in-the-nation taxpayer-funded "democracy vouchers" for city candidates, Honest Elections Seattle declared that the program launched this year would "get big money out of politics." No question, Initiative 122 did create a pool of vouchers for candidates who agreed to certain limits, lowered the maximum contribution to candidates to $500, and barred contractors from writing checks to city candidates.