The words “political donor” don’t exactly conjure images of youth.
The average American donor to political campaigns is older than 65, and their average income is more than $150,000 a year, according to the Pew Research Center. For candidates, that means fundraising often involves a Rolodex full of wealthy contacts — not door knocking in a neighborhood near a local college.
Seattle’s Democracy Voucher program, now up for renewal, was intended to change that. Ten years after it was introduced, the scales haven’t totally flipped — political donors in the city still lean older and wealthier. But supporters say the experiment in public campaign financing has made significant dents in leveling the playing field and giving more power to young people, who are consistently underrepresented as both voters and candidates.
The property tax levy that funds the Democracy Voucher program is expiring this year. Proposition 1 on the August 5 primary ballot asks voters if they want to keep funding it for another decade, at a cost of about $13 a year for the average homeowner.
Seattle voters approved the first-in-the-nation Democracy Voucher program in 2015. In each election, residents now receive $100 in vouchers to donate to local candidates. The idea was pitched as a way to empower ordinary voters and fight dark money in the wake of the controversial Citizens United Supreme Court ruling.
A decade later, the program has not eliminated big corporate spending. Independent expenditures in Seattle (and across the country) have ballooned.
But a small percentage of young people do use the vouchers. And research suggests the program has helped remove barriers for younger candidates. Supporters say candidates are now more incentivized to reach out to young voters and take their concerns seriously, and that vouchers can help improve youth voter turnout.
For young people who see what’s happening with democracy at the national level and “feel really powerless,” vouchers can help, said Cinthia Illan-Vazquez, executive director of Washington Bus, a youth political advocacy organization that supports the Democracy Vouchers levy renewal.
When young people who don’t have disposable income hear about the vouchers, they “get really excited to know that there is a program where they can support a candidate in a meaningful way,” Illan-Vazquez said, adding that vouchers have “empowered more participation in a time where there is a lot of mistrust and disengagement.”
Draining the swamp?
Last week, District 2 Seattle City Council candidate Jamie Fackler was talking to young voters outside Neumos on Capitol Hill. He was dressed as Shrek, and accompanied by a live donkey named Momie.
“I got a little nibbled by the donkey,” Fackler said as he and Momie posed for photos with amused passersby.
Fackler was there for Candidate Survivor, a youth-focused candidate forum put on by The Stranger and the Washington Bus. The theme was "Dungeons and Dragons": Candidates wore costumes and answered policy questions while competing in a talent show.
The event is a chance for candidates to connect with young people — and ask for their Democracy Vouchers. While Fackler talked with potential voters, a campaign staffer carried a clipboard with blank Democracy Vouchers for attendees to fill out.
“The Democracy Voucher program is great,” Fackler said. “It really means that we’ve got to get out there and talk to the voters to get the vouchers, so it really drives engagement from the candidates and campaigns to voters, which is critical.”
Fackler didn't qualify to participate in Candidate Survivor because he didn't meet the fundraising threshold when invitations were sent out. He said he attended regardless to meet voters.
Other candidates at the forum had similar praise for the program. Because every voter now represents a potential $100 donation, candidates are incentivized to get out into the community and talk to people of all backgrounds, as opposed to only dialing for dollars from wealthy donors.
“It’s a much better experience,” said Rory O’Sullivan, a city attorney candidate who worked on the original Democracy Vouchers levy a decade ago.
Because of Democracy Vouchers, “fundraising means just talking to voters, which is different than a normal campaign, where what it means is calling millionaires,” O’Sullivan added, shortly before entering Neumos and competing in Candidate Survivor with a keytar cover of the Beatles’ “With a Little Help From My Friends.”
‘Levels the playing field’
Ry Armstrong, 30, is running for mayor of Seattle. They don’t think it would have been possible without Democracy Vouchers.
“A young trans environmentalist? Forget it, it wouldn’t have happened,” Armstrong said. “[I] don’t have the kind of connections to build out the kind of messaging we would need to win a campaign without them.”
Researchers at Georgetown and Stony Brook Universities found that the average age of candidates in Seattle dropped from 51 to 47 after the voucher program went into effect. The average age of winning candidates dropped from 55 to 47. It’s a small sample size, and it's hard to say with certainty, but the program does appear to have helped open doors for young people, said Brian McCabe, a professor at Georgetown University who worked on the study.
“One of the big obstacles to running for office when you’re not advanced in your career or with a large group of wealthy friends or coworkers is raising money,” McCabe said. “This makes it a lot easier for young people thinking about” running for office.
McCabe’s research found that the voucher program also correlated with more people of color and women running for office. The voucher program “equalizes the opportunity to run,” he said.
“It levels the playing field to say: ‘You don’t need 20 years of experience and a long donor list,’” McCabe said.
As more young candidates use vouchers to run for office in Seattle, McCabe said he thinks it will create a “circular process” that sees more young people using their vouchers to support them.
Armstrong, an actor and nonprofit leader who sang Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide” at Candidate Survivor, has so far raised about $160,000, almost all of it from Democracy Vouchers. They’re in third place for fundraising in the mayoral race behind Katie Wilson and incumbent Mayor Bruce Harrell.
Armstrong and Harrell disagree on a lot, but they’re both supporters of the voucher program. When Harrell proposed renewing the levy earlier this year, he said vouchers were a success story, having “increased participation in municipal elections” and empowered “candidates and voters from all backgrounds to engage in our democracy.”
Return rate
Candidates seem to like Democracy Vouchers. But the majority of voters don’t use them.
“A lot of people I talk to in the field don’t know about the program 10 years later, so there’s a real marketing gap,” Armstrong said.
In 2021, a mayoral election year, about 7.5% of voting-age Seattleites used their vouchers. That number dropped significantly in the 2023 election, with a return rate of just 4.7%.
Participation fell across all age groups, but the decline was especially stark among young people. The return rate for people under 40 was 3.4% in 2023, compared to 7.3% for those over 40.
Opponents of Democracy Vouchers like conservative radio host Ari Hoffman argue that taxpayer money shouldn’t be going to something that most people don’t use. The Democracy Voucher program is “inefficient, underutilized and fails to curb big money’s influence,” Hoffman wrote in the voter guide opposition statement to Proposition 1.
But supporters of the program say the participation rate isn’t actually that low, because candidates who use democracy vouchers have to adhere to spending caps, which creates a logistical limit to how many people can actually use their vouchers.
The spending limits vary by position, and apply to all funds raised by Democracy Vouchers or normal monetary contributions. The primary election limit is $450,000 for mayoral candidates, $112,250 for City Council district candidates and $225,000 for city attorney and at-large City Council candidates.
Because of those spending limits, it’s mathematically difficult for the participation rate to get much higher than around 10% in a given year, said O’Sullivan, the city attorney candidate who worked on the original voucher proposal.
O’Sullivan’s math pencils out. Twenty candidates are participating in the Democracy Voucher program this year: eight mayoral, four City Council at-large, four City Council district and four city attorney candidates. In the unlikely event that every candidate maxes out their voucher contributions in the primary, and the two winners in each race max out their vouchers in the general, it would represent a combined upper ceiling of $7.8 million in Democracy Voucher contributions.
That would require 78,000 Seattle residents to use their vouchers — about 12.5% of the voting age population.
“The limiting factor is not that people [don’t] want to give their Democracy Vouchers,” O’Sullivan said. “The limiting factor is you have a certain number of candidates running.”
It’s also important to compare the participation rate to how many Seattleites were donating to campaigns before the voucher system existed, said McCabe, the Georgetown professor. In 2013, just 1.6% of voting age Seattle residents donated to a campaign. In that context, the Democracy Voucher participation rate is actually really high, he said.
And when you compare the share of people using their vouchers in Seattle to the number of people who donate their money elsewhere, Seattle is "leagues and bounds above every other city,” McCabe said.
Still, supporters of the levy program acknowledge that more education is needed to help people understand it.
“There are still a lot of barriers with people knowing about the program, especially young people,” said Illan-Vazquez of the Washington Bus. “It might be their first election, and they get a voucher that looks like random mail or a coupon in the mailbox and just throw it away because they don’t know about the program.”
In previous election years, Seattle has contracted with the Washington Bus to provide education and outreach to young voters to help them with voter registration and using their vouchers. The Washington Bus didn’t apply for the grant this year, because they wanted to advocate for the levy renewal and avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest.
“It really is going to take a concerted effort by the city of Seattle and partners to be prioritizing outreach to young people, especially first-time voters,” Illan-Vazquez said “I think that’s also the responsibility of campaigns.”
If Proposition 1 passes, the city will create a new community advisory board that will focus on ways to improve the program, including participation and education.
O’Sullivan, the city attorney candidate, thinks Democracy Vouchers have been working well so far. He has a few ideas for tweaks. Doorbelling is a huge part of how candidates gather vouchers, but most Seattle apartment buildings don’t allow candidates inside, he said. O’Sullivan worries the lack of access disenfranchises renters and younger people who are more likely to live in apartments. He’d support a law requiring candidates to be allowed in.
“Entities that operate multi-family buildings need to allow democracy to happen in their buildings,” O’Sullivan said.
People can donate their Democracy Vouchers to candidates up until the general election in November online or by mail. Voters can request replacements through the city’s website.
The Democracy Voucher levy is appearing on the ballot in the August 5 primary election – not the November general election.
As of July 30, 21% of King County voters over 65 had returned their ballots, compared to about 4% of voters under 35.
