AN ORDINANCE relating to elections; raising limits of certain items on the statement of financial affairs in conformity with state law; changing deadlines and definitions related to the democracy voucher program to align better with other state and City practices; creating a crime of falsifying democracy voucher program qualification information; making technical corrections to and reorganizing and clarifying the content of the democracy voucher program; and amending Sections 2.04.165 and 2.04.370 and Chapter 2.04, Subchapter VIII of the Seattle Municipal Code.
Please have you part of the Governance, Equity and Technology Agenda Item five Accountable 119 279 related to elections raising limits of certain items on the statement of Financial Affairs in conformity with state law, changing deadlines and definition of voter democracy voucher program to align better with other state and city practices, the committee recommends the vote passes amended pretty good. So as described this morning, this legislation modifies and improves, we believe the mailed the democracy voucher program. And so with some context in 2015 you may recall that Seattle voters approved initiative 122 was created the Democracy Voucher Program, and provided a voter approved levy funding for campaigns for City of Seattle elected offices. And it was funded by a ten year property tax levy levy of about $3 million per year. And we were in the first municipalities to implement this kind of innovative public campaign finance program. In its first deployment, we emailed as a city democracy vouchers to over 540,000 Seattle residents, and we provided all key program communications in 15 languages. And as a result, we had about a 300% increase in the number of Seattle residents contributing to actual campaigns. So following review of that program, after it sort of first roll out, the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission made several recommendations to improve the the program and to clarify the code under Chapter 2.04 of the Seattle Municipal Court. And a little about the process. It began with the hiring of a Berke consulting firm, firm to do extensive and extensive independent review of the program as it was deployed and as it was described by the voters. And then the Commission received public input at a public hearing on the program that was held in February, the commission staff experienced their experiences in administrators administering the program. They articulated some of their meetings, and on May 15th, 2018, Director Barnett provided the initial brief briefing to the committee, and the legislation was transmitted on the 25th. And then on the second meeting on June 19th, it was heard and the committee voted out unanimously. So here's some of the key changes that came from the commission. And then, of course, there were seven improvements slash amendments made by a few of the colleagues on the dais. The first changes had come from the commission was replacing the threshold for reporting financial interest to make it consistent with the threshold in place at the state and with the city prior to the passage as more of an administrative categorization of financial interests. And they believe that made sense. A second change was requiring that the Commission adjust the contribution limit to the nearest $5 or $10 with language that the Commission adjust the limits to amounts, quote unquote convenient for public understanding, because apparently there was little confusion there. There was changes of the date of the mailing vouchers from the first business day of January to the first business day of March per recommendation from Burke Consulting. Again, there are a lot of misplaced vouchers and a lot of as a first time deployment, a lot of mismanagement of the of the vouchers. I should just say they were lost. So based on public input and gathered judgment, I believe was the logical thing to do, democracy vouchers would be mailed to all active, registered, registered voters, but no longer mailed to inactive registered voters. And I'll address amendment that Councilmember Gonzales proposed on that issue. It reformatted to make it possible to assess a monetary penalty on a candidate who does not participate in three debates as it was previously word. The only option was to disqualify a candidate from the program, and certainly a penalty seemed to make more sense. As it turns out, it adds to the list of crimes created by I 22. The crime of falsifying qualification information clarifies that a candidate relief from the maximum campaign evaluation cannot redeem vouchers once they have reached that valuation. And this responded to the Commission's concern that the candidates banking vouchers for future elections, the amendments that were proposed and accepted by councilmembers Gonzales must get a clustering czar proposed amendment that would require notification of inactive voters, that they have the opportunity to request democracy vouchers if they continue to reside in Seattle. And that certainly made sense, given the fact that there could be mistakes. And we want to make sure every inactive voters has every opportunity to participate in the. Program. Casper Gonzales also amended the clarification that candidates who participated in the program but lose in the primary have until the first workday in September to redeem their vouchers again . That date made sense based on how this actually plays out. And lastly, there was an amendment by counterexamples that increased the donation requirements and maximum campaign valuation limits for candidates for the city attorney's office. In the currency limits for city attorney candidates were they were equivalent to the district, the district, city council candidates, which was 150 donations and ordered to participate with the changes that were accepted. This makes the limits equivalent to the At-Large positions, and the city attorney is an at large office. So certainly that made all the sense. And thank you for accounts from Eric Gonzales for pointing those out and making those amendments. Councilmember Mosquito should I just describe your amendments are okay and councilmembers mosquito want to clarify that city employees and organization have contracts with the city that are unrelated to providing goods and services, are not considered contractors when considering whether contribution from a contractor is illegal. And we gave some examples as to why that made sense and councilmember mosquitoes. Her second of the four amendments. I should just say that in issue one, when she provided for 425 democracy vouchers to be provided to every participating donor in Seattle. And this amendment now would allow the commission to determine the value of the vouchers and retain the maximum amount of funds available to each recipient of a vouchers. Now, that doesn't sound like it makes a lot. I didn't describe it for fairly well, but what we considered was whether it should be five $20 vouchers or some other not ten, $10 vouchers. I just sort of said that as a joke at the table, but we looked around and what made sense, given the fact that there are going to be a lot more candidates for a lot more positions. And so councilmember skater wanted to address that possibility to make sure we had the flexibility councilmember skate also to allow a candidate in order to qualify of the program to receive contributions of signatures from adults. Shall residents see? Currently, the code requires contributions from adult child residents who qualify for the program, but not signatures. And her amendment allows the signatures and contributions to come from different residents. Still, there's a 400 person threshold, and the policy arguments were that some people were. It was a little confusing for some folks who were signing, making signatures and some people that were they thought that was part of the process and we want to encourage the signatures. For many people, that that's their participation. But we're also requiring that people that actually give the $10 amount that they sign as well. And so all people can participate in the process. I hope I describe that well. And it made a lot of sense, made a lot better sense when it was described at the table as I'm describing it now. But I think we get the gist of it. And last, the amendment will allow and this is sort of a really cool when I thought the amendment advanced by comes from state allows the commission to work with the King County elections to explore whether election drop boxes could be used as a place to transmit the vouchers to the commission. So a lot of people are filling out their vouchers when they're voting. And so with that, one depository may make sense. And and we had the Julie Wise from the King County elections at our table and she was very receptive to this and they thought that may make a lot of sense. So thank you for those fine amendments by councilmembers Gonzales and Mosquito. So that's the base legislation that was unanimously approved out of the committee. Is there any comments or questions or concerns? Casper Mosquito. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I think Councilmember Gonzales and I, having lived the experience of democracy vouchers, want to make this workable and implementable and accessible for all future council colleagues and future candidates, and most importantly, to all the residents in Seattle. I think that some of these amendments today help make this a more accessible program, easily more implementable by the FCC, and I think reflects some of the feedback that we've gotten directly from community partners and most notably those who put forward the initiative in the first place. I want to acknowledge that many of these ideas were already incorporated into the suggested and based legislation that the FCC pulled together based on conversations that they had with voter justice folks and making sure that it was accessible to communities most historically marginalized from voting, talking to low wage workers, workers who speak English as a second language , people who've been historically not on the voting rolls and trying to identify ways that we can make democracy vouchers a tool for people to be able to access so that more people are engaged civically in our local democratic process. I also want to just very briefly, if I might, Mr. Chair, call the Fourth Amendment that I put out there, the Aretha Basu Amendment, because she was really an advocate coming from communities of color, youth advocates, talking about how we can increase access to civic engagement. And it was her idea to put the democracy vouchers into the drop boxes, the ballot drop boxes, when they're open and available. So that comes directly from the youth advocates and communities of color groups who are trying to make voting more accessible thanks to her work and for her idea on that one. Very good. I thought that was your idea. So. Okay. Fix the team. It takes a team, actually. Okay. Any further comments? Councilmember Becerra. Thank you. And thanks to you both for your work on this councilmember. Miss Kate, I know I. Brought something up. Which was my concern that if democracy vouchers weren't available until March of the actual election year, that someone who hasn't been running for election before might get left behind because somebody who has been involved knows that the election cycle usually gets started somewhere around Thanksgiving, and then it's a full on effort for the remainder of the next year. So I had suggested that we keep the democracy at voucher funding available date in January. You convinced me that so many were lost, that it wasn't it wasn't really reasonable. But I'm wondering how how are we doing this to. Reach out to people. For an example. Right now people are and I always say, Hello, Polly Grow. Yes, I send people to Polly Grow first. But that people can get signatures now. If they want to run for city council for 2019, they're able to get the signatures now and the $10 contributions. So. Two questions. One, how are you getting people engaged and sort of informed about the program? And then secondly, would you explain how this signatures work? Can people now just have signatures without $10? To qualify for vouchers? Is that your idea or how's that working? It's okay if I address the police, constable. Thank you. First, I want to thank Councilmember Bagshaw. She had a really she and I had a really good conversation about accessibility to the program and wondering if we should keep the date when democracy vouchers are sent out at January versus March. In conversations that I had had with the CDC and community partners, we were trying to identify ways to make sure that more education and outreach could be done with the voting public at large to make sure that all residents knew that the democracy vouchers were coming their way to look out for them to not accidentally recycle them or have them get lost in the household. What we found is that when the democracy vouchers were sent out that first week of January, many people were still recovering from the holidays and just getting back into the work mode. And many people receive a lot of mail and have a lot of bills at that time. And many of those democracy vouchers were getting put at the bottom of the mail pile or were accidentally getting recycled. We have asked now that the CDC work very diligently in January and in February, so that by the time March rolls around and the democracy vouchers are mailed out, every household has a chance to understand that these democracy vouchers are being mailed to them. The importance of receiving $100 in democracy vouchers and the value that that has, especially to first time candidates and nontraditional candidates, especially thinking of nontraditional candidates who are more likely to be women and people of color and low wage workers and immigrants. We wanted to make sure that everyone had sort of a level playing field as it takes many of these first time candidates more time to get to yes to say yes to running for office. Having those all mailed out at the same time feels like it helps to level that playing field. So we're really going to be working and I hope to get future updates through the Council Presidents Committee from the FCC about their plans for outreach and engagement in January and February, which I think is part of your question how are we doing outreach and engagement, especially in various languages, which we know was a a desire of the community and a concern last time around. Translating the materials is one thing, but having ambassadors to go out and have a conversation with communities is another. So we'll be looking at that. And then to your last question about the signatures, you, a candidate, will still have to have the required number of signatures and the required number of small dollar contributions. So if you are running in a district, that required contribution is at least $10, at least 150 $10 contributions, and at least 150 signatures for Councilmember Gonzalez and I it was $410 contributions and 400 signatures. And so you will still have to have those requirements, and one cannot supplant the other. We just wanted to make sure that the the distinction was clear, that it can be an individual who signs and donates or could be somebody who donates or somebody who signs. But you still have to meet that signature and dollar contribution requirement. So part of the. Idea I hear from you is that somebody can sign that's what he or she is able to do. They don't have $10, but they want to show their support to you so they can sign not $10. But that does not count towards 150 with $10 plus that you need. Thank you. Thank you. Very good. Any further comments or questions? I was just going to add in terms of the outreach as well, I know that the Seattle Ethics and Elections has already begun their work to advertise and talk to community about democracy voucher program for those folks who are interested in public financing of their campaigns for the 2019 cycle. And my understanding, based on a tweet they just put out timely, timely tweet just literally at the same time that we are having this meeting is that folks who are interested in qualifying for the DeMarco Street voucher program can begin the program and meeting its qualification criteria is beginning July 2nd. Very good. And further questions if that, please call the role on the passage of the Bill. Moschella I O'Brien I want to thank John Gonzalez Johnson whereas President Harrell. I. Eight in favor and unopposed. Bill passed Chair of Senate Please read the part of the planning land use and Zoning Committee.