The Independent View: Approval Voting Initiative In Seattle Qualifies For November Ballot

An Initiative, I-134, designed to Change the way Voters Select Local Candidates in Seattle, Washington, has Qualified for the November Ballot.

I-134 aims to bring “Approval Voting” to Seattle Primary Ballots, where instead of choosing just One Candidate, Voters would Select as many as they Approve of. The Top Two Candidates with the most Votes, moves on to the General Election

I-134 was filed in January by Seattle Approves, a Campaign led by several Veterans of the Seattle Tech scene. They needed to Collect more than 26,000 Signatures, in the first half of the year.

According to Seattle Approves, Approval Voting Elects more Representative Leaders than our current Voting system. It also Eliminates Vote Splitting, and enables Voters to be more Honest about their True support for each Candidate.

“If you’ve ever debated between voting for a candidate that you really like and another you like less but has the big money backing to win, you’ve experienced the problem with our existing elections,” said Logan Bowers, a Seattle Approves Co-Chair. A Startup Founder and former Amazon employee who ran for Seattle City Council in 2019, Bowers added that “the money flowing into elections combined with the flaws in our current voting system means our elections aren’t a fair assessment of what voters want. Too often, voters feel compelled to vote strategically based on who they think can win.”

Troy Davis, another Tech Veteran and Founder of the Seattle Approves Campaign, said if Passed in November, I-134 might even take effect in time for the 2023 Elections. “I’m thrilled to see that regular people can actually improve the system,” Davis said. “We’re not political insiders or special interest group staffers, we’re just average voters who want Seattle to thrive over the next 20 years.”

The Tech backgrounds of the Seattle Approves Leaders have influenced how they’ve approached Election Reform. “For me, that background has encouraged me to think about the bigger picture of how systems work,” Evan Radkoff, a former Amazon Engineer, said. “We’re used to civic engagement that’s just working toward the next election cycle. But how do we want elections to be run on the scale of decades?”

Davis thinks the Rest of the Country is starting to pay attention and that Approval Voting could be the New norm. “Because this change is very simple to implement and great at understanding voters’ preferences, it’s likely that city and county councils around the country will consider making the same change,” Davis said. “In most jurisdictions, a council can simply adopt it — no need to wait for an initiative, wait for a long implementation process, or even change their charter.”

Approval Voting is already in use in St. Louis, Missouri, and Fargo, North Dakota.

In St. Louis, the System was adopted in November 2020, with support from 68% of Voters and then used successfully Four months later. In the March 2021 Primary, with 4 Candidates for Mayor, St. Louis Voters supported an average of 1.56 Candidates. In 2022, 69% of St. Louis Residents Voted to Retain this change.