“Seattle voters won big tonight. Seattle leads the nation, first on $15/hour and now on campaign finance reform.”

Much to the detriment of Washington State’s biggest corporate donors like Microsoft and Starbucks, and to the chagrin of Seattle’s newspaper of record, Seattle voters have elected to have publicly-financed elections, and to severely limit the influence of corporate power on city hall.

    

The I-122 initiative — also known as “Honest Elections Seattle” — passed with 60 percent of votes cast. The initiative provides $100 in “Democracy Vouchers” for each of Seattle’s 400,000-plus registered voters, meaning that ordinary voters can counter corporate influence on elections by up to $40 million in a given cycle. The funding for the vouchers comes from an $8 property tax levied on homes worth $400,000 or more.

But I-122 does more than just provide public campaign financing — I-122 also prohibits corporations that do more than $250,000 in annual business with the city from donating to local political campaigns. It also outright bans all donations from corporations that put more than $5,000 a year into lobbying elected officials.

Voters in Seattle have good reason to demand publicly-financed elections, given the disproportionate influence corporate donors have won through campaign donations and lobbying. As Occupy.com reported, Mayor Ed Murray’s 2013 campaign asked for and received the maximum allowed donation from Microsoft. After Murray won the election, Microsoft was awarded a $46,000 contract to provide tech support for Murray’s transition team.

But that’s just one example — the list, compiled by the Seattle-based Sightline Institute, shows how corporations exploited the pay-for-play system to win favors from city hall. While this list shows the ten worst offenders, Sightline discovered that 22 of the biggest corporate donors won $84 million in contracts from the city of Seattle between 2013 and 2015, in return for donating just $28,000 to candidates for municipal elections and lobbying.

“Seattle voters won big tonight,” read a victory statement from the Yes on I-122 campaign. “Seattle leads the nation, first on $15/hour and now on campaign finance reform. We look forward to seeing more cities and states implementing their own local solutions to the problem of big money in politics.”

Read the full text of I-122 here.