by Jen Heerwig and Brian J. McCabe, Washington State Standard
June 10, 2025
In American politics, money talks — and usually wins. Candidates fundraise to hire staff, print literature, and reach voters. More often than not, the candidate who raises the most money comes out on top.
While money speaks volumes in elections, most campaign cash comes from a tiny sliver of Americans. In 2024, just 1% of Americans contributed at least $200 to federal candidates. Those donations accounted for a staggering 80% of all money in federal races. These donors are not representative of the American electorate. They’re overwhelmingly white, wealthy, and predominantly male.
Money is a problem in local elections, too. When we started researching local elections in Seattle, we found that a tiny sliver of the electorate was funding political campaigns. In fact, in 2013, only 1.49% of Seattle residents donated to a local campaign. Those donors were concentrated in the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods.
Seattle’s Democracy Voucher Program changed that.
By giving every voter publicly funded democracy vouchers to support candidates of their choice, the program has brought tens of thousands more people into the political process. Today, the donors in local elections look much more like the voters of Seattle.
As the program has expanded, participation has surged. The share of registered voters contributing to campaigns nearly doubled — from about 5% in 2017, when voters first began using their vouchers to support city council candidates, to nearly 10% in 2021, when voters could also, for the first time, use their vouchers to support mayoral candidates. Seattle now boasts one of the highest local contributor rates in the country.
These new donors also reflect the city’s diversity. Democracy voucher users are far more representative — by race, income, and age — than traditional cash donors. To take just one example: in 2013, less than 1% of people of color in Seattle donated to city campaigns. By 2021, with voucher users in the mix, that figure had jumped to 8%. As democracy vouchers draw more people into the system of campaign finance, the program is narrowing the racial and economic disparities that have long distorted our elections and their outcomes.
Seattle’s success hasn’t gone unnoticed. In 2022, Oakland voters passed a “Democracy Dollars” measure modeled on Seattle’s. And reformers in cities like Los Angeles and San Diego are watching closely as they explore public financing programs of their own.
As Seattle heads into its fifth election cycle with democracy vouchers, and voters consider renewing the program’s tax levy, the evidence is clear. The program has moved Seattle toward a fairer, more inclusive democracy.
We hope Seattle chooses to keep leading the way.
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