Tag: approval voting

City Council, Elections

Ex-Mayor Suggests Redistricting Map is “Retribution” Against “Older, Wealthier, Whiter” Magnolia; Election Reform Campaigns Lack Local Funding
Screen shot of Seattle Redistricting Commission's virtual meeting
Seattle Redistricting Commissioner Greg Nickels (upper row, middle) called splitting Magnolia a form of “retribution” against wealthy, older white people.

1.The Seattle Redistricting Commission officially adopted a new map for Seattle City Council districts Tuesday, though not without some wind-related drama: As commissioner (and former mayor) Greg Nickels was preparing to make his final case against the decision to divide Magnolia across two districts, his power (along with that of more than 10,000 other West Seattle residents) went out and the meeting had to be delayed for several minutes.

Most commissioners agreed two weeks ago on a compromise that will split Magnolia along the ridge that divides west-facing view houses from the city-facing half of the peninsula, which includes some of the city’s densest rental housing. (This probably says more about Seattle than it does about Magnolia). The new map, which is based on a proposal from the grassroots group Redistricting Justice for Seattle, eliminates the need to split Fremont into three council districts while keeping neighborhoods like the Chinatown International District whole.

“Retribution [against] Magnolia because it is an older, wealthier and whiter community—I think that’s not something that the redistricting commission ought to be engaged in. And in a larger sense, as we talk about race and social justice, I think that reconciliation is going to be a much more successful strategy than retribution ” —Redistricting commissioner and former mayor Greg Nickels

Nickels, however, never wavered from his insistence that dividing Magnolia effectively disenfranchised the neighborhood. On Tuesday, Nickels said he considered the map “retribution” by woke commissioners against a “community interest that’s very strong and ought to be acknowledged and respected our plan.”

“Retribution [against] Magnolia because it is an older, wealthier and whiter community—I think that’s not something that the redistricting commission ought to be engaged in,” Nickels said.

“I don’t think that individual commissioners are engaging in that, but I want to make it clear that I think that that’s just an inappropriate social policy for redistricting to take on. And in a larger sense, as we talk about race and social justice, I think that reconciliation is going to be a much more successful strategy than retribution.”

The map passed 4-1, with Nickels voting no.

Pie charts showing that the vast majority of funding for both ranked choice and approval voting came in the form of large contributions.

2. In the runup to Election Day, money continued to pour into the campaigns for both ranked-choice voting (a system that would allow voters to rank local primary election candidates in order of preference) and approval voting (a system that lets voters pick as many candidates as they like). As of late Tuesday afternoon, the two campaigns each had roughly $600,000, with Seattle Approves about $17,000 ahead of Ranked Choice Voting for Seattle.

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Most of that money, for both campaigns, comes not from grassroots-level donations from voters but in the form of a few giant checks from advocacy groups (RCV) and wealthy individuals outside the state. Most of Seattle Approves’ money, for example, comes from just two sources: Crypto exchange billionaire (update, maybe not) Sam Bankman-Fried and his company, FTX, and the California-based Center for Election Science, which is funded by the Open Philanthropy Project. More thatn $450,000 of the $614,000 Seattle Approves has reported raising so far came from these two sources.

The ranked-choice voting campaign, meanwhile, has received almost half a million dollars from the local and national branches of FairVote, an RCV advocacy group that’s funded by a number of large philanthropic organizations, including the MacArthur Foundation and the Soros Fund. According to the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission, almost 98 percent of Ranked Choice For Seattle’s funding came from 27 large contributors, and the campaign had only 141 donations under $700. Just over 98 percent of Seattle Approves’ funding came from 22 large donors, and the campaign received just 75 contributions below $700. At least 86 percent of the RCV campaign’s funding came from outside city limits; for approval voting, that number was 90 percent.

Elections, endorsements

Approval Voting/Ranked Choice Voting (Propositions 1A and 1B): PubliCola picks “No” and Proposition 1B

The ballot measure to decide whether Seattle should change its voting system is worded, confusingly, as a two-part question. The first question is yes-or-no: Should the city adopt either of two potential new voting systems for primary elections, ranked-choice or approval voting? The second is multiple choice: Regardless of how you voted on the first question, which of the two systems would you prefer? We’re endorsing a “No” vote on the first question and a vote for ranked-choice voting on the second.

PubliCola Picks graphicProponents of approval voting and ranked-choice voting have spent weeks engaged in highly technical debates about which alternative voting system gives people the maximum say in who ends up on the general-election ballot. A ranked-choice primary would offer voters the the chance to rank as many candidates as they want in order of preference, with the final winners determined by knocking out the lowest-ranking candidate in successive “rounds,” redistributing votes to people’s second, third, and fourth choices until only two candidates remain. Approval voting allows people to vote for as few or as many candidates as they want, with the two candidates who receive the most votes overall moving forward to the general election.

Supporters of ranked-choice voting say their system gives voters more of a voice in the process because even if their top-ranked candidate doesn’t make it through, their votes for the candidates they rank lower will still “count” toward the final outcome. Supporters of approval voting say their system better represents people’s preferences, because they can vote for as many candidates as they want, including candidates they would not have picked in a traditional, one-vote system. Both say their system would be simple to implement—ranked-choice voting because it’s already being used in jurisdictions across the country, and approval voting because it wouldn’t require a new type of ballot, only new ballot instructions telling voters they can pick as many candidates as they want. Ranked choice voting advocates say their plan is more democratic, because it empowers people to express nuanced preferences, and approval voting advocates say their plan eliminates candidates on the political fringes to elect the candidate who appeals to the maximum number of voters.

But let’s pull back a bit and ask: What problem are these voting systems trying to solve? If the answer is “too few people are running for city council,” the two most recent city elections would like to have a word; the last five races for open seats drew a minimum of seven candidates and as many as 15. Moreover, many of those who made it past the primary (in 2019: Tammy Morales in District 2 and Shaun Scott in District 4, and in 2021, Lorena González for mayor and Nikkita Oliver for Position 8) were progressive candidates of color.

Both campaigns claim adopting their system will reduce the influence of money in local elections by lifting the pressure to vote for the best-financed candidate. But Seattle’s money problem is that independent groups can spend unlimited amounts supporting candidates and ballot measures, something no voting system can directly address.

If the answer is “too few people are voting in local races,” it’s hard to see how complicating the ballot—requiring voters to educate themselves thoroughly on a dozen or more candidates in order to rank them or decide how many of them to vote for—will achieve that goal. The more work involved in voting, whether it’s ranking candidates on a scale of one through 10 or going to an in-person voting booth—the fewer people will vote.

Both campaigns claim their new voting systems will ensure that “better” candidates will win—or at least candidates that are more representative of the electorate’s true preferences. But that’s hardly a guarantee. The candidates who make it through local primary elections are determined by a host of messy factors, including who decides to run, what issues are top of mind for voters, and which candidates have financial support from outside interest groups, which enjoy outsized power in Seattle’s local elections. Both campaigns claim adopting their system will reduce the influence of money in local elections by lifting the pressure to vote for the best-financed candidate. But Seattle’s money problem is that independent groups can spend unlimited amounts supporting candidates and ballot measures, something no voting system can directly address. Notably, both campaigns are funded primarily by six-figure donations from organizations outside Seattle.

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Based on their appeals to voters, the real argument for both of these voting systems is that people’s votes will count more when they’re run through an algorithm that tabulates it differently, even though the outcome will always be that the two most popular candidates move forward. This boils down, for either system, to a contention that allowing voters to choose more candidates makes voting more “fair.” (Neither RCV nor Approval Voting supporters have claimed their system would have altered the outcome of recent council primary elections, in which two candidates generally emerge from a field of a dozen or more.) The strongest case for either system, then, is that they make voters feel heard. Unfortunately, the problems with Seattle’s electoral system, most notably the immense influx of outside money from unaccountable independent expenditure campaigns, can’t be fixed by making people feel included. Algorithms can’t fix democracy—or turn 20-point defeats into victories.

This two-part ballot measure also allows voters to choose an alternative voting system, regardless of whether they support our current top-two primary. On this question, we urge readers to vote for Proposition 1B, ranked-choice voting. If we are going to get a new voting system for primary elections, we would prefer that system be ranked-choice voting, both because ranked-choice systems have been tested in many jurisdictions and because we’re open to the idea that, in the future, ranked-choice voting could give a worthy candidate a needed boost in a close three-way race.

Supporters of approval voting say it would lead to more broadly popular, or centrist, elected officials. Historically, Seattle has needed no help electing mushy moderates (PubliCola’s editorial board is old enough to remember the days of Margaret Pageler, Jim Compton, and Jean Godden), so we don’t need a voting system that pushes candidates further to the middle.

Overall, though, we’d prefer to stick with our current top-two system, and advocate for reforms that will actually help even the electoral playing field by reducing the influence of dark money (and the incendiary advertising it pays for) in our local elections.

PubliCola picks “No” On City of Seattle Propositions 1A and 1B Part 1, and IB on Part 2.

PubliCola’s editorial board is Erica C. Barnett and Josh Feit.

City Council, Elections, Morning Fizz

Conflict Flares Over Equity in Redistricting, Billionaire-Backed Election Reform Campaign Tops $500,000

1. Homeowners from Magnolia squared off against renters and advocates for BIPOC Seattle residents Saturday in a forum about city council redistricting that included a preview of an amended district map that would divide the peninsula at the crest of a hill that divides the area both geographically and demographically.

Redistricting has been particularly contentious in District 6 (northwest Seattle) and District 7 (Magnolia, Lower Queen Anne, and downtown). The latest map from the five-member Seattle Redistricting Commission moves all of Magnolia into northwest Seattle’s District 6, consolidating two areas with large, west-facing houses into a single district that excludes less-wealthy areas like Crown Hill and Fremont, which would be divided into three districts.

A group called Redistricting Justice for Seattle, which represents people of color, renters, and other historically marginalized Seattle residents, came up with a map that would preserve the current dividing line in Fremont and return southeast Magnolia to District 7, while keeping other areas, like the Central District and the Rainier Valley, whole. At Saturday’s forum, dozens of supporters of the RJS plan spoke up in favor of a similar proposal from redistricting commissioner Patience Malaba that would split the Magnolia peninsula along 28th Ave. West, consistent with the RJS proposal.

However, representatives from Magnolia businesses, along with several Magnolia residents, pushed back on the plan; one called RJS a “special interest group” that was interfering in the process, while another said she was concerned about the “prejudice” she heard from RJS advocates, many of whom were Black or brown, against Magnolia.

The woman who called RJS a special-interest group also accused them of just “looking at a map” and deciding to divide up a cohesive neighborhood. Actually, the eastern half of the peninsula has far more in common with the less wealthy, renter-heavy parts of District 7 than it does with the view homes on the west side of the 500-foot hill that actually divides the area.

According to data from the US Census Bureau, the three Census tracts that make up this area are overwhelmingly renters (58, 70, and 77 percent, respectively), racially diverse (between 28 and 39 percent people of color), and young (with a median age between 33 and 36.) In contrast, the west-facing, view-home half of the neighborhood is 90 percent homeowners, 81 percent white, and has a median age of 47—a population whose own special interests are powerfully served by splitting up renters and voters of color into multiple voting districts.

The redistricting commission will meet again at noon on Wednesday, October 12, at City Hall.

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2. With less than a month to go before election day (November 8), the campaign to change Seattle’s election system to one where voters can select as many candidates as they like (approval voting) continues to far outpace the competing campaign for ranked-choice voting (a system in which voters rank candidates by preference) and for retaining the current top-two primary system. Seattle Approves, the campaign for approval voting, had raised nearly $500,000 by the end of September, while Ranked Choice Voting for Seattle had juts $52,000 and Seattle for Election Simplicity, the local business-backed group that wants to keep elections the same, had raised just under $45,000.

More than $200,000 of the funding for Seattle Approves came from the Center for Election Science, a tech billionaire-backed California think tank that’s pushing approval voting. Another $135,000 from Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Eighty-seven percent of the funding for Seattle Approves has come from outside the state of Washington (including Nassau, Bahamas resident Bankman-Fried), and just 2 percent of the campaign’s contributions come from donors who gave $700 or less.

In contrast, 79 percent of the funding for Ranked Choice Voting for Seattle so far has come from inside city limits, most of it from district 7, which includes downtown, Magnolia, and Queen Anne. Eight percent of contributions to the ranked-choice voting campaign were under $700.

Seattle for Election Simplicity’s funding consists entirely of larger donations, but those top out at $5,000—compared to Seattle Approves’ $211,000 and Ranked Choice Voting for Seattle’s $25,000. Most of the donors advocating for the status quo are, perhaps unsurprisingly, local, with 36 percent of the the group’s contributions coming from outside city limits.

Uncategorized

Anti-Election Reform Campaign Emerges, Next Year’s Election Starts Shaping Up, New SDOT Director Says He’ll Take Vision Zero Down to the Studs
Map of fatal and serious crashes in Seattle from June 2022 SDOT presentation.
Map of fatal and serious crashes in Seattle from June 2022 SDOT presentation.

1. Next year, all seven district-based city council positions will be on the ballot, and several names have already begun to circulate as potential contenders.

In District 1 (West Seattle), Meta (and former Microsoft) attorney Rob Saka, who served on the King County Council redistricting committee, is reportedly considering a bid against incumbent Lisa Herbold if she runs again next year.

Saka told PubliCola he hasn’t decided yet whether he will run, but confirmed he has met with Harrell as well as “fellow daycare and public school parents, early childhood education providers, leaders in the Black community I used to work with when I served on the boards of the Urban League and the Loren Miller Bar Association (civil rights organization of Black lawyers in Washington State), through my work in policing and legal reforms, and with current and former elected leaders throughout the region.

“I have nothing to announce or confirm, and I remain 100% focused on current obligations — from my legal practice in a new role in my ‘day job’ to the Police Chief search, to helping my kids get back to school,” Saka continued. “That said, I am grateful for the initial discussions—and strong encouragement—from so many as I think about potential longer term next steps in my career and public service.”

In District 2, Tammy Morales (who filled Harrell’s council position when he declined to run for reelection in 2019) could see a challenge from community advocate Chukundi Salisbury, who ran for state representative in the 37th District and was defeated by Kirsten Harris-Talley in 2020; Salisbury did not return an email seeking comment.

In District 3 (Central Seattle), represented since 2015 by socialist Kshama Sawant, cannabis entrepreneur and Jackson Place Community Council leader Alex Cooley told PubliCola he’s “strongly considering” a run against Sawant, who he says has “never been interested in so the problems of the district or the city.” Cooley owns the SoDo-based company Solstice, which grows and processes cannabis that’s sold in stores across the region; he said that it’s “kind of a neighborhood joke [in the district] that you will never hear back from Councilmember Sawant.”

“The city has been on a pretty long decline for at least the past five years—really about 10—and I don’t see Councilmember Sawant solving the problems that the city’s dealing with, [and] is actually part of that decline and lack of progress,” Cooley said.

As a business owner in SoDo, Cooley said he’s seen his share of half-implemented solutions to the problem of homelessness, which in industrial areas often means people living in RVs. Seattle has “fits and starts of good ideas” but fails to commit to them, Cooley said. “We  tried to do the experiment of an RV safe lot, which I’m a huge proponent of, but no one managed it, no one ran it, and so it evolved into chaos.”

Cooley said he’ll take the next few months to make a decision before filing for council races starts in January. Including her first citywide race in 2013, Sawant has won three elections by increasingly narrow margins; she narrowly beat back a recall effort last year.

This item has been corrected to reflect the fact that Chukundi Salisbury lives in District 2, not District 3, and updated with comments from Rob Saka.

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2. In November, voters will get to decide whether and how to replace the city’s current first-past-the-post primary elections by saying yes to ranked choice voting or approval voting or no to both. Ranked-choice voting gives voters the option to rank candidates in order of preference, while approval voting allows voters to “approve” as many candidates that they like, with the top two candidates moving forward to the general election.

Advocates for both proposals say their system would result in elected officials who better represent the views and interests of voters, by allowing them to choose a whole slate of acceptable candidates instead of betting their entire vote on a single person. Advocates for the status quo say the alternatives are confusing and open the system to new forms of gamemanship.

Now, a group of business owners, organized as Seattle for Election Simplicity, has formed to make the case for the status quo. Campaign filings show the group has raised around $35,000 in contributions, all of it (so far) from people who represent business and banking interests in and around Seattle. Among the contributors are HomeStreet Bank and its CEO, Mark Mason ($5,000 total), Costco co-founder and former CEO Jim Sinegal ($5,000), telecom billionaire and Mariners co-owner John Stanton ($5,000), developer Jon Runstad ($5,000), Space Needle chairman Jeffrey Wright ($5,000), and former Starbucks president Howard Behar ($2,500).

So far, almost half of the contributions to Seattle for Election Simplicity, over $15,000, come from outside Seattle. This actually compares favorably to Seattle Approves, which has obtained 87 percent of its almost $500,000 in contributions from outside city limits. The campaign for ranked-choice voting has only reported one contribution so far.

Spotts said he would start work on Vision Zero by doing a detailed assessment of which “interventions” (a category that might include protected and unprotected bike lanes, bus bulbs, road diets, and pedestrian-first stop lights) are working to reduce casualties and which ones aren’t. “We know we have some corridors that are very vehicular-oriented,” Spotts said.

3. The city council’s transportation committee unanimously recommended approving Mayor Bruce Harrell’s nominee to direct the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) on Tuesday, after a brief volley of questions focusing on issues like pedestrian safety and tree canopy in South Seattle, bridge maintenance, and Seattle’s lack of progress on Vision Zero, a plan to end all traffic deaths and serious injuries by 2030.

Spotts said he would start work on Vision Zero by doing a detailed assessment of which “interventions” (a category that might include protected and unprotected bike lanes, bus bulbs, road diets, and pedestrian-first stop lights) are working to reduce casualties and which ones aren’t. “We know we have some corridors that are very vehicular-oriented,” Spotts said.

Later, after District 2 Councilmember Tammy Morales noted that 56 percent of traffic fatalities happened in Southeast Seattle, Spotts added, “I want to spend some more time out on Rainier. I did do some walking and there are places where there’s a very wide crossing distance to get across unsignalized freeway on-ramps and off-ramps, which is a scary thing to get across.”

The safety problems with areas like Aurora Ave. N and Rainier Ave. S have been well-documented for decades (hell, I’ve been covering them myself since at least 2006), and the solutions that will work to address them are no mystery, either: When the city narrowed a portion of Rainier that runs through now-chichi Columbia City, people stopped driving their cars into businesses and there were fewer traffic collisions, because people could no longer drive at freeway speeds through the neighborhood.

North of Columbia City, where Seattle has continued to do almost nothing to slow traffic or provide opportunities for pedestrian to cross the street safely, the crashes, injuries, and deaths continued. Notably, the city has made almost no major changes to calm traffic along the speed-inducing corridor since approving the “road diet” (after almost a decade of opposition, including from then-council member Harrell) in 2015. Cutesy signs, “empowering” billboards, and slightly lower speed limits won’t cut it; more stoplights, signaled crosswalks, and a narrower travel path for people in cars can and will.

City Council, Elections, homelessness, Morning Fizz, Parks

Council Could Place Ranked-Choice Voting On Ballot; Ballard Commons Still on Slow Track to Reopening
Ballard Commons
Ballard Commons

1. On Tuesday, Seattle City Councilmember Andrew Lewis is expected to introduce legislation that would put ranked-choice voting—a type of election in which voters rank candidates according to their preference—on the November ballot alongside an existing initiative, I-134, that would allow voters to choose as many candidates as they want, a process called approval voting.

When presented with a validated initiative proposal, the council can put the measure on the ballot as-is, pass it as law themselves, or place an alternative measure on the ballot alongside the original initiative; if they put two measures on the ballot, the one that receives the most votes above a majority wins.

Ranked-choice voting, or instant-runoff voting, has been implemented in cities across the country, though in a slightly different form; in places with partisan like New York City, voters from each party use ranked choice voting to choose one person to move forward to the general election. In Seattle, which doesn’t have partisan elections, the top two candidates in the primary move forward to the general. Approval voting, in contrast, has only been implemented in two places in the US: Fargo, ND, and St. Louis, MO.

Advocates for ranked-choice voting argue that it elects leaders who are more representative of the general electorate. According to Fair Vote Washington spokesman Ben Chapman, ranked-choice voting produces “more civil, more issue-based campaigns, more voice for the voter and better representation for previously underrepresented communities.”  Advocates for approval voting say their system gives a fair chance to candidates who tend to languish in a winner-takes-all system where voting for the candidate you really like can feel like “throwing away your vote.”

Cannabis store owner and former city council candidate Logan Bowers, a member of the Seattle Approves campaign, says the council should put Initiative 134 on the ballot as-is, without introducing a second measure that would impose a totally different system. Under its ethics rules, the council is not allowed to discuss I-134 (or any alternative) publicly until it starts formally considering legislation to put the proposal on the ballot, which it will do next week. Because of the ethics constraint, Lewis declined to comment on his potential competing initiative.

Bowers says the council is rushing through an alternative measure without giving it the kind of scrutiny approval voting received through its campaign and signature gathering process. “I don’t think they need to rush this; they should just let approval voting go through or not, and they can always [put forward] another proposal later,” Bowers said. “We shouldn’t push this through as a two-week summer project.” Chapman counters that ranked choice voting is already a “known quantity” in use in more than 50 places across the US. “We don’t want Seattle voters to be an experiment,” Chapman said.

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2. Since last December, the Ballard Commons—a 1.4-acre park surrounded by apartments and kitty-corner from the Ballard library— has been closed, its skate bowl, spray park, and grassy fields just out of reach behind the tall metal fence that has kept unsheltered people from setting up tents in the area for the last seven months. 

In a memo to Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office April, the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation recommended “fully reopening the park by summer,” but added that they recognized “we cannot be successful without strong, sustained support of the obstruction process” by the city’s Unified Care Team, a group of about 60 Parks, Department of Transportation, and Human Services Department employees that is in charge of removing encampments, including those that obstruct the use of public spaces.

The memo went on to recommend fully reopening the park by Memorial Day, with assistance from the Unified Care Team to “implement the… obstruction [removal] process.” Continue reading “Council Could Place Ranked-Choice Voting On Ballot; Ballard Commons Still on Slow Track to Reopening” →

Elections, Guest Contributor

St. Louis Made Their Elections More Equitable. Seattle Should Too

By Logan Bowers

In 2021, St. Louis—a majority-minority city—made history by electing its first Black female mayor, Tishaura Jones. How was she able to make history? Because in 2020, St. Louis voters reformed their elections to take back power from special interests and place it firmly in the hands of voters. This November, Seattle will get to choose whether we want the same election reform for our city.

Jones previously ran for mayor in 2017, and despite very strong support and endorsements, lost in a crowded primary by just 2 percentage points. Jones’s opponents included three other major candidates, two of whom were Black. In the end, the only white candidate in the race, Lyda Crewson, won with just 32 percent of the vote.

Far from an aberration in the city’s history, the election continued a trend where the city rarely elects a mayor who reflects the electorate, ideologically or demographically. St. Louis University political scientist Ken Warren noted at the time that Jones almost certainly would have won handily if either of her fellow Black competitors were not in the race, since the three similar Black candidates split the vote.

St. Louis had long been dominated by machine politics, where a small number of insiders exert undemocratic influence over elections. In 2017, this manifested as a less representative candidate eking out victory without majority support because three of her challengers split the majority vote.

So, what did St. Louis do? Voters went to the ballot box in 2020 and passed a voting reform initiative with landslide 68 percent support. They adopted an open, non-partisan primary, like Seattle’s, but with one key enhancement: St. Louis voters aren’t forced to choose just one candidate. Instead, in the primary, voters can pick as many candidates as they want. If they like two candidates, they can pick two. If they like four, they can pick four. And, of course, it’s still okay to pick one. St. Louis adopted this change in November 2020, implemented it over the winter, and used it successfully in March 2021, leading to newfound representation for St. Louis voters.

This little change means that two similar candidates will never split the vote and both lose. It means that voters can pick all the candidates that will be good at the job, not just the one they think they have to pick to win. It means having two strong choices in the general election.

This voting method is called Approval Voting, and it is the most representative voting system currently used in America. It’s also the simplest. The ballot has only a tiny change to the instructions and tabulation works the same—just count the filled-in ovals for each candidate. The simplicity means the results are trusted, easy to understand, and immediately available on election night.

In 2022, Seattle voters will have the same opportunity to take power back from special interests, follow in St. Louis’ footsteps, and make our elections fairer, more equitable, and more representative.

Seattle needs this reform more than most cities, and sooner. Because of our previous election reforms, participation in our elections is off the charts. We have high voter turnout, and many great candidates to choose from. But our existing voting method works exceptionally poorly for our packed primary races, and we have exactly the same problem St. Louis faced. The more candidates, the less power voters have, and the more control special interests exert. We can see it in the results. When was the last time you felt like you had two strong choices in the general election, or even that both candidates were trying to serve your interests?

Many groups are working on proposals to make our elections better—and virtually all of them would be incredibly good for democracy. Approval voting is both one of the best changes we can make and the only one we can enact before the next election cycle. Indeed, the next closest reform proposal on the horizon, ranked choice voting, probably won’t be available in Seattle until 2029 at the earliest, and if history is any guide, likely not until the 2030s. There’s no reason to suffer through another decade of disappointing mayors and disappointing council members when we can repair the system today.

Seattle Approves is the grassroots, volunteer effort working to bring better elections to Seattle this year. Starting in mid-February, you will decide if you want to sign the initiative petition, and this November, you will get to decide if Seattle follows in St. Louis’ footsteps. With your help and your vote, we can ensure that Seattle voters always have two compelling candidates in our general elections.

Logan Bowers is a cannabis retailer, software engineer, and co-chair of Seattle Approves. In 2019, he ran for Seattle City Council in District 3 on a pro-housing and pro-transit platform, and his support for Seattle Approves is informed by his experience meeting more than 5,000 voters during the campaign.