♪♪
-And the candidate with the most votes wins.
-This fall, Seattle voters will be asked
if they want to change how they select
future mayors, city attorneys, and council members.
-It's democratic because the candidate
with the most support wins.
-Two competing alternatives are on the ballot, as well.
-You vote for me first and Betsy second.
-We break down Seattle Proposition 1
and explain approval voting and ranked choice voting.
-It opens up more voices.
-And we hear from two places
that have implemented these two systems.
-Ranked choice has worked well for us in Maine.
-The thing that we really loved about approval voting
is that it's just very straightforward.
-Before you cast your vote,
advocates from both sides weigh in.
-The votes are counted.
-Making sense of Seattle Prop 1,
next on "City Inside Out."
♪♪
Welcome to this edition of "City Inside Out."
I'm your host, Brian Callanan.
Up till now, Seattle voters have picked one candidate per race
during our primary elections.
But that may soon change,
depending on what happens with Seattle Proposition 1
on November 8th.
Pay attention because how you vote
will determine how the next Seattle mayor, city attorney,
and city council get elected.
This fall, Seattle voters will decide whether they prefer
picking more than one candidate in future city primary elections
and which of two alternate voting systems they favor.
On the ballet is Proposition 1, a two-part question.
The first question is --
should we change the current voting system, yes or no?
The second question is --
if the system is changed, do you favor 1A,
which is approval voting,
or 1B, which is ranked choice voting?
More on those options later.
But let's focus on that first question to begin.
On November 8th, if the majority votes no to the first question,
future Seattle city elections would stay the same.
You pick your top candidate, and the top two vote getters advance
to the general election.
But if the majority votes yes,
what do Propositions 1A and 1B mean?
Proposition 1A is a system called approval voting,
and it works like this.
Let's imagine the candidates are ice cream flavors.
In the primary, you select as many flavors as you approve of,
and the two most popular ones
will advance to the general election.
Proposition 1B is a system called ranked choice voting,
and it works like this.
In the first round, voters rank their favorite flavors
from 1 to 5 if they like more than one flavor.
Think of the second choice as a backup.
Let's say your top choice is strawberry,
but it's the least popular flavor and gets eliminated.
Your second choice, pistachio, will get counted instead
so your vote isn't wasted.
This process of elimination continues
till two flavors are left.
Voters will pick from one of those two flavors
in the general election.
So, will Seattle voters preserve the status quo
or overhaul the current system
and favor picking multiple candidates?
Remember to weigh in on November 8th.
♪♪
To get some perspective
on this possible change to Seattle's elections,
we spoke with organizers in St. Louis,
which has approval voting,
and in Portland, Maine,
where voters use a ranked choice system.
It's a tale of two cities
that are trying something new with the Democratic process,
and Seattle may not be far behind them.
-Washington is totally broken.
-Washington is broken.
-Washington right now is broken.
-Nationwide, a majority of people
believe our political process has serious problems.
Mallory Rusch says approval voting
could be part of the solution, starting at the city level.
-It passed really overwhelmingly here in St. Louis.
-Rusch, Executive Director of the nonprofit Empower Missouri,
helped Prop D pass with 68% of the vote in 2020,
as voters supported the idea of choosing multiple candidates
rather than being forced to pick just one.
-It's just very straightforward.
You vote for as many candidates as you want.
The candidate with the most votes wins.
It doesn't get much simpler than that.
-This is called approval voting.
-Supporters of approval voting,
used in St. Louis and Fargo, North Dakota,
say this system virtually eliminates spoiler candidates,
the ones that can split the vote
in our current plurality voting system, as it's called.
Rusch says approval voting has made an impact in St. Louis
by encouraging candidates to find a middle ground
and appeal to voters
with progressive, moderate, or conservative politics.
-When you are running a campaign
in an election that is using approval voting,
your job is to make your tent as big as possible.
-Portland, Maine, is also changing local elections,
but with a different system.
-The state of Maine is now using ranked choice voting.
-People, once they start using ranked choice,
like it and want to expand it to other offices.
-Anna Kellar is Executive Director
of the League of Women Voters in Maine
and helped with the passage of ranked choice voting
in Portland in 2010.
-So, how does it work?
-The system, where voters
rank their top choices in each position,
has expanded to include the vote
for governor and federal offices statewide.
Kellar says ranked choice has prompted more candidates to run,
creating three- or four-way races
where more voices are heard.
-And I think that has really enriched
both the debate in those races
as well as preparing people
to run and serve for those offices
who otherwise might have been shut out
or discouraged from running.
-Ranked choice voting is used in many more jurisdictions
compared to approval voting,
and Kellar says the research shows,
while RCV won't solve all the problems of politics,
it's a good start.
-Rather than just getting frustrated
and writing off politics,
let's try doing it in a different way.
-But is Seattle ready for change?
-Seattle has been willing
to experiment with democratic processes.
-Mark Smith is a professor of political science
at the University of Washington
who says, while Seattle voters
have approved uncommon measures like democracy vouchers
to support candidates,
asking them to change the voting system entirely will be tricky.
-It's often confusing the first time around.
-Smith says the ranked choice option,
because it's used in more jurisdictions,
has been studied more closely.
-You can vote for me first and Betsy second.
-And in some cases, it's led to less negative campaigning
and fewer attack ads.
-You don't want to totally alienate the other one
and their supporters 'cause you want their second-choice votes.
So there's more incentive --
what can you do rather than sort of tearing down
the other candidates?
-In Seattle, approval voting
looked like it would be on the ballet by itself this fall,
until a majority of the Seattle City Council
pushed through an ordinance adding the ranked choice option
for voters in July.
-And I do think this is an appropriate action
for the council to take.
-Approval voting, if voters choose that option,
would go into effect in 2025,
ranked choice by 2027,
setting the stage this fall for elected officials
to take a stand on the very way they're elected.
-I think people will take cues from from trusted figures
within the city.
-What cues will you take
when it comes to the future of elections in Seattle?
Get ready to cast a vote
on the way you vote this November.
So, to explain more about Proposition 1
and specifically 1A and 1B,
we have with us Jazmine Smith --
she is political manager of The Washington Bus,
speaking in favor of ranked choice voting --
and Logan Bowers,
co-chair of the Seattle Approves campaign,
which supports approval voting.
So, we've explained on this show
how approval voting and ranked choice voting work,
and we've put a spotlight on two cities
that are using those different systems right now.
So, let's focus on Seattle at this point.
Logan, I will go to you first.
If voters decide to change the city's election system,
Why is approval voting the right choice
compared to ranked choice?
-Yeah, so, we started
the Seattle Approves campaign in 2020.
We wanted to make elections in Seattle
as fair, as equitable, as representative as possible.
And so we looked across the country to find,
what were the groundbreaking voting reforms going on?
And what we found was an amazing group of folks in St. Louis
that had just passed a new reform, approval voting,
and put it to use in their local elections.
And what we saw was, we saw folks,
supporters there, saying amazing stuff, like,
"Approval voting will make sure most voters
actually support the winning candidate,"
"I'm proud to support approval voting
so our representatives work hard to earn our votes."
That was Representative Cori Bush,
member of the Squad.
And we saw that representative power play out.
The city elected a Black woman mayor
for the first time in its history,
which is pretty groundbreaking for that city.
And we thought, "This is the best voting system
currently in use in the country,"
so we said, "Let's bring it to Seattle."
We went to work 43,000 signatures later,
it's appeared on the ballot. -Okay. Alright.
And we'll get to that other piece of it
with the ballot piece next.
But, Jazmine, similar question to you.
If voters say yes to Prop 1,
why should they choose ranked choice over approval voting?
-Ranked choice is the most representative,
the best, most proven system that there is.
It's used in 53 jurisdictions.
It'll be on 53 -- or, sorry, 50 in the next election.
And it's just been shown to be the best way
to show how people feel
and how they want to vote. -Yeah.
And rank their choices, too. -Exactly.
-I did want to point out, there's a difference
in terms of when these programs would be implemented.
2025 and -- Can we go into that briefly, please?
-Yeah. August 2025 would be the most likely timeline
for both of them
because our system needs to go through --
Since there would be a change regardless,
then it wouldn't be automatic.
It wouldn't be as soon as 2023, as likely.
-Mm-hmm.
-But it wouldn't be necessarily as late as 2027.
It's just kind of like overshooting --
"by 2027" on that end. -I see. Thank you.
-Yeah. Let me have Logan jump in.
-Yeah, so, the the two propositions as written --
1A could be as late as 2025.
1B could be as late as 2027.
We actually believe Proposition 1A is implementable for 2023,
and the reason is because it is so simple.
It works with the existing ballot design.
It works with the existing certified voting software,
already supports it out of the box.
And in St. Louis,
it only took four months to implement.
So we're optimistic that we can get that
as early as the next election.
-Okay. Please.
-The difference is that we have more robust laws,
and we would actually have to do more testing, regardless,
and voter education for both.
You should still do voter education on both ranked choice
and approval voting regardless. -Absolutely.
-Absolutely true. Yeah, thank you.
And we'll definitely jump into that piece
in a little bit, Jazmine.
Logan, I want to go back to you, though, and talk about this --
approval voting used in only two cities in the U.S. --
St. Louis, Missouri, Fargo, North Dakota.
RCV, as Jazmine is telling us,
used in more than 50 jurisdictions,
has been studied much more.
What's your response to the critique that approval voting
is an untested system?
-Yeah, I mean, none of these voting systems are new.
They've actually all been around for hundreds of years,
and they've all been used in kind of the distant past,
and there's plenty of evidence to show that they work.
It's only in the recent American cities
that we're choosing what to adopt.
I would say it's kind of like, you know,
if you had a Windows phone in 2007
when the iPhone came out.
Like, yeah, you know,
there were more Windows phones in the world,
but when something new and better comes along,
that's more representative...
Approval voting delivers more accurate results,
relative to the will of the voters,
and it does so without disenfranchising voters
with a complex ballot.
So the more complex description in the opening segment,
you can see research shows that disenfranchises
somewhere between 2% and 4% of voters.
They just -- the ballot is so much more complicated.
In Seattle, it would have somewhere between
80 and 256 ovals for a mayoral race.
-Okay. -That you you lose voters,
and the effect gets worse the bigger the race.
So, you know, in Seattle, where we have 15-way races,
that effect can be as high as 8%.
So the nice thing about approval voting
is you don't get that dropoff in voter turnout,
and you get even more representational power.
So, we move on to something better.
-I feel like there's a representation here with regard
to how this is being explained with
ranked choice voting.
Please, go ahead.
This disenfranchisement piece that Logan brought up.
-I would say that there's more enfranchisement
when people know that their vote isn't wasted.
And New York's, I believe, 10% increase in voter turnout
by people who may have known
that their favorite wasn't going to make it through,
but they could still vote for them
and show that preference for other folks as well,
and that it doesn't actually trip people up as much
as is being portrayed.
95% of New Yorkers said
that ranked choice voting was simple,
and Alaskans in that last election,
85% said that it was simple to use.
-The disenfranchisement comes from
the other 15% that had a hard time.
-Okay. Okay.
Did you have any thoughts about this disenfranchisement piece?
I know you touched on it.
I just wanted to have you
have a response, if you'd like.
-It's not necessarily disenfranchisement if they say
that it wasn't necessarily that simple.
I would say that getting more people to turn out and show up
is enfranchising those voters.
And I think that when
more communities of color are turning out
and are utilizing ranked choice voting,
then that's more representative,
and that when compared to approval voting,
then we saw that communities of color were less likely
to engage with approval voting and just do bullet voting,
which is where you just do the one
because you know that voting for multiple people
will dilute your vote or show that --
or it'll hurt your favorite, whereas you can still vote
for your favorite with ranked choice voting.
-Okay, got it.
I'm going to try to move on from that,
because I think we covered that very well.
But Logan, I'll jump back to you
and get into some nitty gritty here.
So approval voting is I-134.
It looked like it would be on the ballot by itself
a few months ago, but the Seattle City Council
decided to add the ranked choice voting for voters, too.
What was your response to that decision?
-Yeah, I mean, you know,
it's really important to be careful
when you're manipulating the system by which you're elected.
So I think it's a little shocking that the city council
would choose to draft a bill in two days
and pass it without consulting any experts.
There's many different kinds of ranked choice voting.
You know, some are better, some are worse.
You know, Portland, for example,
has an RCV proposal that looks nothing like Seattle's,
and in fact,
avoids many of the pitfalls that the council proposal has.
So I'm a little surprised that they would propose
rewriting their own election rules,
you know, faster than they would rename a post office.
-Okay, Jazmine, some thoughts on this?
Did the council rush this through
to get RCV on the ballot?
Why didn't ranked choice voting gather signatures
and pursue an initiative campaign of its own?
-Because we were working in Olympia.
We were doing the work for local options on 5584
with Senator Trudeau.
And that's where our focus was during the legislative session
and getting ranked choice voting
for communities across Washington.
And so when the city council went through the correct process
that's laid out in the charter of when you have an initiative,
you can also have a competing proposal,
then that's what they did, and absolutely support it.
I agree with what was said by council members
that when we're engaging with democracy,
then the voters should have all of the options in front of them,
just not the one that got in front of them first.
-Okay, and Logan, I think I want
to keep going down this path here that Jazmine's alluding to.
When the council looked at I-134,
Andrew Lewis pointed out that if Seattleites chose
approval voting in 2022, that would potentially set up
a non-conforming system with King County,
where Councilmember Zahilay and others are working to pass
ranked choice voting in 2023.
How do you react to that?
-Yeah, I mean, you know, people have been proposing
voting reform measures for 25 years now,
and they're all hypothetical, right?
Throughout that whole time,
we're still using the same voting system
now, about 18 years or so.
So, you know, we put I-134, Proposition 1A on the ballot
because we wanted something that was legal, that was simple,
easy to use, easy to understand, and would give us
as much representational power right now.
I think there's interesting things to do in Olympia
that can create better reforms in the future,
but the reality is, Proposition 1B didn't appear
until Proposition 1A was already on the ballot
because, as I said, there's many different forms
of what the council proposed, and they kind of picked the one
that they could slap on in two days,
which doesn't have the advantages,
and we haven't had the chance to scrutinize it.
And that's why I like a national voting reform.
I like open primaries.
I wrote a letter to the council opposing it,
saying this was not good democracy.
-Okay. Jazmine, some thought about this?
What Logan's bringing up with regard to
how the council did this and this idea of the work
you've been doing in Olympia, too?
-When we have a tested and proven system
that's been showing up all over --
and there's different versions, the Portland version,
and it will be different than the Portland, Maine version,
will be different from the Alaska version.
And we all have this evidence of how it works
and that it works better, and just reject the premise
that it's not good democracy
to let voters choose what they prefer.
-Got it.
Are you concerned that if approves did pass,
if 1A did pass here,
that it would set up a non-conforming system?
Is that part of your concern?
-Absolutely, and that it could pass
and then be facing a legal challenge
for the Washington Voting Rights Act as well,
because while ranked choice voting
has been tested against voting rights legislation,
approval voting has not,
and we've stood the test and stand up.
But with Washington's Voting Rights Act, then
we just don't know,
and there could be that legal challenge.
And with Yakima,
then ranked choice voting was identified
as a potential remedy to Voting Rights Act violations.
-Interesting.
-Having representative democracy.
-Thank you. This legal piece --
I want to make sure we dive into it briefly.
Logan, your response to what Jazmine's saying?
-Yeah, I mean, it's just pure kind of scare-mongering.
We've looked at the local laws.
We used a legal firm to help us navigate that
to make sure it conformed with Washington state laws.
It absolutely does.
We looked at, you know, places across the country
that two other cities have adopted it,
and it's been smooth sailing for years now.
And the reason it's completely smooth sailing for them
is because it's unambiguously legal.
There's just no substance to it.
-Okay, I'm going to move on to another topic here, if I may.
I wanted to raise a concern here about money.
And let me go to you here first, Logan, here.
I talked to King County elections about this.
They told me that no matter which option is chosen,
if voters to this do decide
to change our system here in Seattle,
it's going to cost a significant amount from process changes
to election worker training to extensive voter education.
We're going to have some state level costs too, apparently.
The secretary of state will have to
weigh in on voter intent rules,
ballot certifications, and some other issues, too.
I want to get an idea for this, Logan.
How much will it cost to implement approval voting?
What's your message to taxpayers on this?
-Yeah.
The message is that it costs essentially nothing.
Now, the King County does do its kind of educational piece,
which they do for every election cycle.
So there is that piece and all reforms will have that.
If you look at the fiscal note on the Proposition 1B,
it costs an extra $4 million per election.
Proposition 1A, what we proposed, does not,
and the reason it does not is because the ballot design
stays the same, the voting software
stays the same, and none of that changes.
The ballot is physically smaller because again,
it only has -- for the last mayoral race,
for example, we only have 16 ovals instead of 80 or 256.
And so, yeah, so our option is definitely
the low cost option versus $4 million an election, minimum,
is the fiscal note from that Proposition 1B.
-Okay. Your thoughts on this, Jazmine?
About how much this is going to cost people?
-I mean, in Maine it cost $100,000 to implement.
And studies have shown that the cost
that's proposed for ranked choice voting
just isn't the actual cost.
It's way higher.
Like, one jurisdiction that enacted it,
it was 1/14 of the cost.
I believe that was New York.
But a., overshoot and have it cost less.
B., it wouldn't necessarily have 256 ovals.
It would have five.
The voting vendor that we use in King County already
is able to have ranked choice voting.
It would simply be the software
and the voter education piece on both ends
of what we need to upgrade the system and fix it.
-Okay. Thank you.
And Logan, just another quick money question here.
Talk to me about the funding for the campaign
for Seattle Approves.
I know some people have raised some questions
about where these dollars are coming from.
What do you want to say about that?
-Yeah, I mean, we started with the premise --
we looked around the country and we found a voting system
that looked amazing, that folks were championing.
Then we did polling in Seattle and we went to voters.
We just said, "Hey, this is what it is.
This is how it works. Would you like it?"
And polling came back,
our first poll came back, 72% of voters supported
us moving to approval voting.
And so we said, okay, great.
This is a good system. The voters want it.
Let's go see if we can raise some money to do it.
So we went to national voting groups
that are interested in voting reform,
that are interested in strengthening democracy,
and we we wrote grants and we requested and we said,
"Hey, we have a system here that needs reform.
We have voters that want that reform.
Will you help us strengthen democracy in Seattle?"
And so a couple of different groups
stood up and said, "Yeah, we'll help you with that."
And so that's how that came to be.
And we beat out other cities also seeking those grants,
because we were able to demonstrate
Seattle voters wanted it.
-Thank you. Some thoughts about how these campaigns are funding,
how your campaign is funded,
if you want to talk about that, please?
Who are the supporters, I guess, of RCV?
-There's a lot of organizations that, again,
have already been doing the work,
that are advocating for ranked choice voting.
We don't have a big think tank that's dumping a lot of money
in from out of state, but we are just
community organizers with community support
that are talking about the issues.
We've got Washington Community Alliance,
Washington for Equitable Representation,
Northwest Progressive Institute,
the Washington Bus in support of Ranked Choice Voting.
-Got it.
Briefly, some of the different people
that support your campaign, please?
-Yeah, we have the Equal Vote Coalition,
Seattle Indivisible,
Open Primaries also supported,
relative to the two propositions,
our proposition.
-Thank you. I wanted to make sure I covered that piece.
Here's a big question.
And Jazmine, maybe I can start with you here.
I've talked to advocates on both sides of this issue,
and they've told me either choice here, 1A or 1B,
would be a much welcome change,
as opposed to our current system here.
But from what I've seen in the research,
Seattle's in a bit of a unique system
where both systems are on the ballot this fall.
Are you concerned that with all the campaigning
going on between approval voting and ranked choice voting,
voters might get overwhelmed, a little too confused
and say no to both options?
-I'm not necessarily worried about that,
just because what I hear from community members
is that folks are really concerned about our elections,
and recognize that there needs to be a change.
And so when posed with that first question,
top of the ballot almost, it is like, yeah,
our elections do need to change.
-Okay. -With all of the conversations
about ranked choice voting,
whether that's at the state level,
at King County level and across the nation,
then I think that it's a really easy choice.
-Okay. We'll get into a closing statement
in just a minute there, but I did want to talk about
this confusion question.
Do you have concerns about that?
-Oh, yeah, for sure. I think there's a real risk there.
And I hope folks will still support Proposition 1A.
You know, we could spend a whole hour on
just one of the two voting systems
and still have questions,
and so it's really important to think these things through,
because this is our democracy online, right?
And I think it's telling that
when the council passed their alternative,
three of the council members said essentially,
"I don't want either to pass" or "I question
whether we need this at all,"
which I think to your point about making it harder
to make that decision, is definitely troubling.
-Yeah, Seattle is going to be looking to its leaders on this
for some guidance, and we'll see what happens there.
It is time to wrap up.
And if we can keep this brief, that would be great.
But Logan, some final thoughts, your final word to voters
about what you want them to understand
about Prop 1 and specifically Prop 1A.
-Yeah, I think the thing about Prop 1A is,
it delivers the most representative voting system
we can have within our current election rules.
It keeps things simple.
It does not leave any voters behind in the service of trying
to make the elections more representative,
and it does so cost effectively, and I think those are key.
It's key to keep things straightforward
so everyone understands what's going on.
-Got it.
Jazmine, some final thoughts here for people watching this?
Yeah, I am really excited to support Proposition 1B,
ranked choice voting,
because it allows for that voter preference.
It allows for us to have
our most representative democracy
and have more representation along the lines.
It keeps things simple for future jurisdictional changes
with King County and the state,
and I'm really excited that we can have better elections
in a really simple and effective way
and join the rest of the world
in embracing ranked choice voting.
-Okay, thank you both for this input here.
And we will be right back.
What are people saying on social media
about ranked choice voting and approval voting?
One group writes, "With approval voting,
you have the power to fully express your opinion
about every candidate on the ballot.
No more limiting your voice."
Another says, "In a ranked choice voting,
candidates need to think twice before going negative.
Niceness is a good electoral strategy!"
-We'd like to know what you think.
Send us an email at contact@seattlechannel.org,
or find us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
-Coming up next week, the race to represent
Seattle's 37th Legislative District in Olympia --
Chipalo Street and Emijah Smith
are in a close race for the open seat
vacated by Representative Kirsten Harris-Talley.
And they'll join us right here to debate
why they should win your vote.
That's on the next "City Inside Out."
I hope you join us.
♪♪