♪♪
-It's gonna be for most people, like,
"Well, what's my ballot gonna look like now?"
-The votes have been certified, and it's official.
Seattle will be moving away from a top-two primary
and using ranked-choice voting in future city elections.
-Let's not disenfranchise anyone.
-While there are concerns about the alternate voting system,
it's already being used
in more than 60 jurisdictions nationwide,
including New York City.
-I actually think it was a very big success.
-So how does ranked-choice voting work,
and what will it take
to successfully implement it in Seattle?
-Ballot design is really where it all starts.
-We hear from the experts.
-People are really tired of the polarization.
-We've got a lot of people who are ready
to start ranking their candidates.
-Major changes are coming for Seattle city elections,
so drop that ballot and join us on "City Inside/Out."
♪♪
Welcome to this edition of "City Inside/Out."
I'm your host, Brian Callanan.
With the certified results this week, it's final --
Seattle voters have narrowly approved
a new ranked-choice voting system for city elections.
But the discussions on how to implement this process fairly,
how long that will take,
and how much it will cost have just begun.
This week, we're looking at the future
of ranked-choice voting in Seattle
and how that could impact elections not just here
but across the nation.
After weeks, certified election results finally confirmed
about 51% of Seattle voters
want to change our city's voting system.
-It was a little bit of a nail-biter
as far as whether we were gonna see any change at all.
-That's Heather Kelly, board president
of the Seattle King County League of Women Voters,
which supported Seattle Proposition 1.
The measure fell behind on election night,
as voters were choosing no on Prop 1's first question
whether to change our system at all.
[ Cheers and applause ]
But now, most Prop 1 supporters
can join the election celebration.
The vote swung to yes on that first question
and yes to ranked-choice voting
over approval voting on the measure's second question,
putting to rest a contentious
and somewhat confusing campaign battle for voters.
-I think the great news is that ranked-choice voting
is gonna feel a lot less complicated
compared to the question that they had to vote on.
-Kelly is bullish on the benefits of RCV,
a voting system now in more than 60 jurisdictions across the U.S.
that allows voters to rank their top choices,
but she knows Seattleites will have questions.
-It's gonna be for most people,
like, "Well, what's my ballot gonna look like now?"
-Supporters use the example of ranking your favorite ice cream.
If your top choice of strawberry is the least popular
and gets eliminated,
your second choice of pistachio gets counted instead
and your vote isn't wasted.
Through a process of elimination,
two flavors remain,
and voters pick one of those two choices in the general election,
what Kelly sees as a huge boost for voters
who may be feeling left out in a polarizing political climate.
-I think what I really want voters to feel is that,
you know, it's not just that your voice matters,
but that there's a power in using it.
-Seattle's RCV system is set to go in effect in 2027,
which would impact an election
for seven city-council seats that year.
-I know that that's what the ballot measure calls for
as far as the time frame,
but I'm hopeful we can get it done even sooner.
-That hope will depend on King County
creating some new software, new ballots,
and a major voter-education effort.
-We'll be working with King County elections
and other organizations that they already partner with
to make sure that the rollout goes really smoothly.
-It's been quite a year, New Yorkers.
-How do you spell "smooth rollout" for RCV?
Supporters say try NYC.
-I actually think it was a very big success.
-Laura Wood is the former
chief democracy officer of New York City,
where voters said yes to ranked-choice voting in 2019
and used it for the first time
for mayoral and city council elections last year.
-It was definitely an all-hands-on-deck operation.
-The city worked with multiple community-based organizations
to reach out to voters using 20 different languages.
-Let's lift the voices of local communities.
-But this effort would not have happened, Wood says,
without a heavily debated
one-time city investment of $15 million.
-In the end, the city was able to commit
a really tremendous amount of financial resources
to the educational campaign.
-It's not clear yet what the cost of educating voters
about RCV will be in Seattle,
and that's not the only challenge.
-Let's not disenfranchise anyone,
because democracy is too important
to disenfranchise people.
-RCV has skeptics, like our newly elected Secretary of State
and voters in San Juan and Clark Counties,
who rejected ranked-choice voting measures this fall.
-You can vote for me first and Betsy second or...
-Or me first and him second.
-But RCV supporters say
the system encourages less negative campaigning
and helps attract more diverse voters and candidates,
as evidenced by New York's mayor, who's black,
plus the most women and people of color
New York's City Council has ever had.
-The fears that people had about it
leading to, you know, outcomes that were not as good
for candidates of color did not come to bear.
-It's a lesson learned for Seattle,
which is waiting on King County and the state legislature
to consider their own RCV measures next year.
-Seattle is a great baby step towards a statewide reform.
-And the nation is watching, too,
as Seattle joins dozens of other cities
and states around the country looking for a new way to vote.
-Given where we are as a democracy right now,
it's incumbent on all of us to be thinking about steps
that we can take to make our democracy more accessible.
-And to discuss this topic further,
we have with us Kendall Hodson.
She is Chief of Staff for King County elections.
Great to have you here.
We also have with us Kamau Chege.
He is Executive Director for
the Washington Community Alliance.
Kamau, good to have you, too.
And finally, Stephanie Houghton.
She is managing director for FairVote Washington.
Stephanie, great to have you, too.
Kamau, I'm gonna go to you first here.
The Washington Community Alliance
is made up of more than 70 organizations led by
and working in communities of color.
You helped pass RCV in Seattle,
so what impact do you think ranked-choice voting
is going to have on these communities?
-I think it's going to be great, not just for the organizations
that do a lot of civic work in the city of Seattle,
but also for voters because for the first time in primaries,
people won't be, you know, nervous about talking about
which candidate that they're voting for
and, you know, feeling the awkwardness
of interpersonal politics
because they'll be able to convince their friends
of a second or third choice.
Right now, you know,
politics is really hard for people to talk about.
It's getting more polarized, even within
the nonpartisan elections of the city of Seattle,
and this change that overwhelmingly,
75% of Seattleites voted for
is going to allow us to have positive some politics
where I can say who I'm supporting
and my friend can try to convince me
of who should be my second choice,
and I think that's going to be great for everyone.
-Thank you for that.
Stephanie, let me go to you next,
because your organization also actively supported RCV
up through the election, but this was a very close race.
People did favor RCV with question 1B on the ballot,
as you mentioned there, Kamau, but it looked like 1A,
that main piece there that needed to pass
for any change to happen to our voting system.
it looked like it was gonna fail election night.
That eventually changed and kind of squeaked by there.
What message do you think you got from Seattle voters?
-I think we got a couple of messages from that,
the first one being that this was a confusing setup
for a question, right?
And I think that that in and of itself kind of needs addressing,
but the second part, too, is that it wasn't just
ranked-choice voting on the ballot.
And that alternative that did not work out
was a really scary option, a really dangerous option,
and I think a couple of the articles and endorsements
that came out said, "This is really bad.
Like, 1A is really bad.
Maybe vote no so that 1A doesn't happen,"
and I think that that was really the message
that we took away
is because we've been talking to voters for so long.
FairVote Washington, WCA, we are in the community.
We talk to voters all the time.
We know voters are ready for change, right?
We know that voters want something different.
There aren't a lot of people
looking at government today and being like,
"Yeah, that's great. Everything's fine.
I think that no change needs to be made."
We know that,
so I think when you're looking at question one,
that's really the message, was like,
it's a confusing setup,
and 1A was really scary to a lot of people...
-Yeah. ...as it should have been,
and that's why it kind of ended up squeaking by.
Of course, I'm happy with the result,
but I'm even happier with the 1A versus 1B question.
That 1B just... did such an excellent job.
-Thank you for that. Alright.
So, Kendall, it's gonna be your office's job
to implement this new system.
First on the list, take a very deep breath.
Here we go, but I just want to know about this.
How well-prepared is King County Elections
for ranked-choice voting in Seattle?
-Yeah, it's a great question.
As a rule, we don't weigh in on ballot measures either way,
so didn't take a position on this.
But now that we have that result,
we're excited to get started
and figuring out how we implement this.
It is a conversation we've been having for a number of years.
It's been talked about in Olympia.
King County actually considered a measure just last year
to move to ranked-choice voting,
so we've been having conversations with
other jurisdictions about what it looks like.
We've been talking to folks like the Center for Civic Design
about what it would look like for us to do this.
So we've been thinking about it, but we're excited to actually
dedicate some resources to it, really get into the weeds now
and figure out a lot of those answers.
-Great, and I'll get into that resources piece
in just a little bit.
But, Kamau, let me go to you here
because I talked with an official in New York City
who helped successfully implement RCV there last year.
She said education is going to be
a key part of this for Seattle,
and that means getting a clear message across to voters.
And I think about this because our newly elected
Secretary of State has expressed some concerns about RCV.
It could disenfranchise people of color,
potentially people who don't speak English.
How do you make sure that doesn't happen?
-I think that is where a lot of people, neighbors,
and civic organizations come in.
For WCA, we were founded coming out of the 2020 census,
doing census outreach, and were really successful
in making sure we had the resources
in talking to community members,
using relational organizing, one on one conversations,
and we were able to raise
the participation rate for Washington State
from being among the bottom 30 states in 2010
to having the second-highest rate of self-response in 2020.
And so we know that we're capable
of having conversations with people
to get them to participate in the civic life of our country
and in making our democracy stronger,
and so if King County, the city of Seattle,
the state, are able to make the resources available,
we know that our community organizations can get it done
and make sure people feel comfortable
ranking their choices in future elections.
-And I promise I'm gonna get to that resources question
in just a little bit,
but, Steph, I want to make sure I jump in with you here
because FairVote was working in
Seattle and Clark and San Juan Counties, too,
which had ranked-choice voting on the ballot,
and in those counties, RCV did not pass.
So I'm trying to figure out lessons learned here.
Messages that worked. Messages that maybe didn't work here.
How does that inform this education effort
that I know you're gonna be involved in here in Seattle?
-Yeah. So I think, you know,
San Juan County and Clark County,
I think there were a lot of lessons to be learned,
and one of the main messages is breaking through, right?
And saying, like, "We have a solution here.
Let's talk about how we can best implement the solution,"
and I think that Seattle is gonna really help
with that messaging because we have such, like,
a widespread network of trusted messengers,
people who support ranked-choice voting,
and that once voters start using it,
they really love using it.
Ranked-choice voting was on the ballot
all over the country.
It doesn't always pass on the first round.
It takes a lot of voter education
just to get people to want to try something new.
Change is a little scary.
So we are taking that lesson learned from Clark and San Juan.
The other piece was it was tough to break through down in Clark.
There was a really exciting congressional race happening.
-Right. Yeah. -It was funny.
A lot of our messaging was,
"Aren't you tired of the negativity?"
And then there's -- -You had a campaign
to work with, yeah, right. -Exactly. Exactly.
But again, just breaking through was really tough,
and I think we were able to do that in Seattle
because this network that Kamau has really worked so well
at putting together was able to share that message.
-Great. Kendall, let's get to it here.
New York City spent $15 million on voter-education efforts.
Will Seattle have to come up
with that kind of money to implement RCV here?
-Yeah, that's a good question.
I don't think we know the answer yet.
We really need to put some resources to this
to do the planning, to start thinking through
what we need in terms of a timeline and a budget.
The ballot measure gives us to 2027 to get this done.
We're obviously gonna move as fast as we can,
but it's really important that we do it right.
I think we talked a little bit about the climate
that we're in right now.
There's also a lot of misinformation
about elections right now, so we need to get this right.
We need to do lots of user testing.
We do lots of working with voters,
making sure all the pieces are in place,
so our first conversations are with our tabulation vendor,
getting some of that set up,
and then that education piece, that voter-outreach piece,
is gonna be absolutely essential.
-Do we even know who to ask at this point?
Meaning, does it come from Seattle?
Does it come from King County in terms of those dollars?
Or how does that -- how does that work?
-Yeah, it's complicated how we allocate election costs.
Typically, if a jurisdiction is doing something,
we're gonna allocate those costs to them,
but we're gonna be working really in close partnership
with the city of Seattle to put together something
that we can make sure is going to work.
-Okay, great. Stephanie, I'll go to you here.
Do you have any thoughts about costs
you could anticipate for this?
Because I know this is that
big question that was always in the background here,
implementing something new, what it's gonna cost,
where's that money gonna come from?
Some thoughts about that.
-Yeah, I think we don't really have it all worked out yet,
and I think we're looking forward to working
with King County on doing that voter education,
voter outreach, because I think that to us
is the most important part
that everyone who wants to rank their candidates
gets to rank their candidates and knows what that means,
know what the outcomes are gonna be.
So for us, that's really how we're thinking about it,
as voters have said that they want this.
Okay, let's take the next step
and tell them how it's gonna work,
tell them, like, all the ins and outs,
and that part is, I think,
gonna be working with the community,
gonna be working with local government.
But I can't say
that I've worked out all of the costs, either.
-I know it's a work in progress, that's for sure.
-It is definitely a work in progress, for sure.
-Kamau, maybe I can get your thoughts about this,
who should be paying to implement ranked-choice voting,
where should funding be directed?
Some thoughts about that?
-Well, I think we want to make sure that King County Elections
that will be administering the ballots
have the resources they need, but here's what we also know.
You know, my understanding, and I might be wrong,
but King County Elections already has the software
to be able to tabulate ranked ballots.
We also know that jurisdictions have had different time scales
in terms of implementation,
so while we have 2027 as a deadline for, say,
Seattle and King County elections,
there are places across the country
that have implemented, for example, within a year.
And I think some of the estimates that were produced
in the city council's effort
to put it on the ballot, you know, those things --
I just imagine if I were
in the shoes of leading King County Elections,
I'd want as many resources and as long of a runway...
-That's right. -...as possible.
But that's going to be something that, you know,
different stakeholders come up together.
You know, I do want to address just a couple of things
that have been floated out there
about whether this will be difficult for voters.
-Okay.
-People in their everyday lives rank choices all the time.
It is the most intuitive way of communicating your preference,
and there are people of color, immigrants, you know,
new Americans, and non-English speakers
in New York City, in Utah, in Alaska,
in jurisdictions across the country
that used ranked ballots,
and they preferred and communicate that
over 90% of them will say that --
-They can pick the ice-cream flavors, yeah, I got you.
-Exactly, and so can people with disabilities.
So I think it's, you know, wrong for some to suggest
that this is going to make elections difficult for people
with disabilities or for non-English speakers.
-Yeah. -We know that's not the case
across the country.
-Thank you for making that point,
and I'm gonna get to that timeline piece in just a second.
But a last question on cost here, Kendall.
I heard that bit about software.
I'm trying to figure out what else is needed
in terms of the physical plan.
Do you need to print new ballots?
Is that gonna cost money and all these different things?
Maybe some of those back office kind of costs
we might think about. -Yeah, there's a lot of things
that we're thinking about right now.
So, ballot design is really where it all starts,
thinking through
how many candidates we're gonna be ranking,
thinking through what that ballot looks like.
That's kind of a really initial piece
we need to be thinking about.
We love our tabulation system.
We will need to make some changes,
so that with it's gonna come certification timelines
and things we'll need to work with the Secretary of State
to make sure that we can get done in a timely way.
There's gonna be other things, like we're gonna
probably move to a two-page ballot.
That maybe seems like not a huge thing,
but right now, our team reconciles every single night,
every single ballot in one-to-one way
with that envelope and that ballot.
We'll need to think through what that looks like
when all of a sudden, you have multiple pages with a ballot,
and we'll need to think about results.
I think one thing is we have lots of great examples
of ranked-choice voting across the country.
Voting systems really vary a lot by state.
We often only see 50% to 60% of results
reported on election night here in King County.
So thinking through, how are we making sure that
we're reporting those results in a way that is helpful,
gets people information, but also doesn't cause confusion
is something we're thinking about, too.
-Is it a situation where you would limit it
to just the top five choices?
I've heard some talk about that.
-Is that an idea? -Yeah.
I mean, I think the ballot measure says at least five
in the ranking.
If you look across the country,
there's lots of different ways that folks do it.
I mean, we've seen, obviously, city council races
with 17, 20 folks. -Yeah.
-That looks really different on a ballot,
so those are the kinds of -- -Yeah, thank you, democracy.
-Right? Those are the kinds of questions
we'll need to be thinking about
and that we'll need to work with our vendor
to make sure that our system can process all of those.
-Got it, and just an education piece,
maybe Kamau or Stephanie, jump in on this one.
In thinking about this, you've got some voters who --
well, they're all voting by mail, right, in our state here,
but they can't come to the polls to say,
"Oh, I have a question about this."
I guess that just makes the whole education piece
that much more important.
I was talking with New York City about this,
and I'm trying to figure out how you work on that piece of it,
making sure things are posted in different languages
and things of that nature here.
Anyone want to jump in? -Yeah.
Well, I think for just a high-level point
for every voter to be assured,
if you're someone who didn't vote for ranked-choice voting,
didn't vote to move or change our elections,
when we do have a ranked-choice primary,
things aren't going to change for you.
You can still just have your one preference of the candidate
you like as your first choice and not rank any other choices,
so no one is being forced to change how they vote.
People are given the opportunity
to rank second and third choices,
and, you know, I've been really proud
as just a King County resident
of the way that King County elections
is able to engage with voters on Twitter, on Instagram,
online e-mail, giving them a call.
And I imagine if people have questions,
they'll be able to get those readily answered.
-Fair enough. Yeah? -I would offer
we do also have some in-person opportunities
for voting here in King County. -That's true.
-So we'll open our six to seven vote centers across the county,
and then I think language is really important, too.
So we provide materials in Chinese,
Vietnamese, Korean, and Spanish right now.
We'll be adding Somali and Russian next year,
so that's also part of that
ballot design and education question
is making sure we're doing all of that work
in all of the languages that we provide ballots.
-Do you have a point? -Yeah, and that flexibility
that I think both just touched on
is, like, meet voters where they are, right?
Like, this is the ballot.
Let's talk about it,
and I think it's it's online, it's e-mail.
We also had some really great door knocking
within neighborhoods that was really cool
because you could knock on somebody's door
and it was like, "Oh, yeah,
I'm interested in that, but I don't know what it is.
Great. Let's talk about it."
And we had, you know,
these really sort of small canvas packets
that were just your neighborhood, right?
So you just go out in your neighborhood
and say, like, "I know how this works.
Can I talk to my neighbors about how this works?"
It's not about like, "I like this candidate.
I don't like this candidate."
It's, "This is your new ballot.
Can I talk to you about it?" -Yeah.
-And it is quite literally meeting voters where they are.
-Yeah. Yeah. I want to get back to this timing issue,
and, Stephanie, let me start with you.
I talked with the League of Women Voters.
They were hoping to get this RCV system in Seattle
rolled out before the deadline of 2027
that we saw in our ballots, and I should point out, Kamau,
you brought this up earlier, but this vote in New York City,
they approved RCV in 2019,
had the system in place two years later.
Would you like to see RCV in place by the time
we elect a mayor or city attorney again in 2025?
What's our timeline here?
-We'd like to see -- We would like to see that.
We also know that voters need to be educated.
We are looking at cities like New York
and other places that have done it really quickly,
a really quick turnaround.
So we are hoping to work closely with King County Elections,
but yes, we would love to see this implemented by 2025 --
for the 2025 election.
-The clock's ticking here. -Yeah. I know. I hear that.
I guess it's this question of do you want to move
a little more quickly with the momentum of this election?
Do you need to take more time with it?
Some thoughts on timing.
-Yeah, I mean, I think we're gonna move
as quickly as we can,
but I think it's really important that we not
skip any steps, that we not do our due diligence,
and to make sure that we get it right the first time.
So I mentioned earlier this climate of misinformation.
We need to do it really well.
-Yeah. Yeah. Can I jump in on one point?
-Please. -Because King County, I know,
has talked about RCV in the past,
might even bring it up next year in legislation.
The state has been talking about this for years.
Do you have to wait for those other pieces
to fall into place, or what's that about?
-It's a great question. We don't have to wait.
We're not gonna wait. We're gonna move forward.
But it also means we're gonna move forward in partnership,
so one thing we're gonna be doing
with the Secretary of State's office
is working through voter intent questions.
I think this is something that maybe folks
don't think a lot about, but we've got an 88-page manual
that tells us how to process different things that voters do,
like if they put little stars next to their choices, right?
We have a rule that tells us how to do that
so we do it consistently across the entire state.
We're gonna need that same thing for ranked-choice voting,
so what if somebody marks two first choices?
What if they skip their fourth choice, right?
Those are all things that we're gonna need to work through
with the Secretary of State's office
and hopefully other counties, too,
so that we're setting the entire state up
to do this consistently when we go forward.
-I don't want to tell people to do this on the ballot,
but what does happen when you put a little star
next to your choice? -We are a voter-intent state.
We're gonna count your ballot as long as you are consistent
and make it clear to us what you meant.
-That's -- Thank you for breaking that down.
I did not know that.
Kamau, some of your thoughts on timing.
You touched on this earlier,
but do you need to move quickly with this?
Do you take more time?
It's a bit of a balancing act here, I guess.
-Yeah. For us, I think moving at the speed of trust
is what we need at this point in our democracy,
and our perspective is that, you know, it should be possible
for the county to implement this by 2025.
But regardless of when, you know,
it's implemented, you know,
we know we're eventually going to get there,
and it's not just places that have already implemented
ranked-choice voting across the country.
For example, in Georgia, there's a runoff happening...
-Heard about that. -...right now.
If you're in the military and you're overseas,
you don't really have the opportunity
to get a second ballot,
and so the military uses ranked-choice voting
in situations like that,
where people rank their first candidate, their second,
so, you know, if there is a runoff, their vote still counts.
And I think that's what every voter can be reassured of,
is, you know, no matter when this is implemented,
we are moving to a system
that is going to strengthen our democracy and make sure
that your vote counts for the candidates you prefer.
-Thank you for that. We need to start wrapping up here.
This has been a great conversation.
Thanks very much. Kamau, let me start with you.
I guess just this idea about expectations
and hopes for RCV as we head into the future.
-Yeah, I think we're at a point in our democracy
where people are really tired of the polarization
and they're feeling like they haven't been heard by government
and they want their ballots to be able to reflect
their full range of preferences,
and what voters delivered in Seattle,
and not just by voting to change our elections,
but overwhelmingly, you know, 3/4 of Seattleites
preferring ranked-choice voting has given legislators,
I believe, a mandate to consider ranked-choice voting
for other elections, like our presidential primaries
and for lifting what's currently a ban on jurisdictions
using ranked-choice voting not just in the primary,
but for the general election, as well.
And we hope to see legislators be responsive to that.
-Thanks for that.
Stephanie, some final thoughts here
about your hopes for RCV in the future here in Seattle?
-Sure, yeah. I am looking at this Seattle vote the same way.
The legislators, city councilors,
county councilors across the state of Washington,
I think, like, we've got a mandate.
We've got a lot of people
who are ready to start ranking their candidates,
and we're excited to kind of see the next steps.
I think we're excited about a presidential primary
ranking opportunity, and also, that this is really
a nationwide movement.
Ranked-choice voting was on the ballot
in 10 places across the country this year,
and that's incredible.
We're really talking about a systems change
with real results.
If we change the way that we do elections,
we're gonna change the way that those elected folks
are having conversations once they get there.
It is a way for voters
to not have to vote for the lesser of two evils,
and it's a way for candidates who become elected officials
to keep having good, policy-driven campaigns
and conversations.
-Thank you for that.
Kendall, you've got a lot on your plate here.
I know King County Elections does.
I guess your hopes and thoughts about the future for RCV.
-Yeah, I mean,
I think the good news is we've got an incredible team
of professional election administrators
who are gonna be working to do this.
They love a challenge.
They're excited to get started
and start to dig into all of these questions
and really do it in partnership with lots of folks.
We're gonna need community. We need advocates.
We need our voters to really help us move this forward,
and we're excited to do it.
-Thank you all for the input here,
and we will be right back.
♪♪
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Coming up next week, taking the pulse of Seattle's economy.
Downtown retailers are dreaming of a prosperous holiday season,
but is it truly back to business as usual
in the wake of the COVID pandemic?
We check in on the next "City Inside/Out."
I hope you join us.
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