City Council Member Sal
Albanese
By Ben Max
As he ran for mayor this year, former City Council Member Sal
Albanese typically didn’t go more than five minutes without mentioning
his call to bring additional campaign finance reform to New York City.
Despite the fact that the city already has a heralded public-matching
system that encourages small donation fundraising, Albanese pointed to
the “democracy voucher” program instituted in Seattle, which is even
more radical in its efforts to lower individual donation limits,
encourage more voters to engage in politics, and push candidates to pay
more attention to residents of all financial means.
The Seattle program,
passed by voters in 2015 as part of a larger “honest elections”
initiative, not only mandates exceedingly low ceilings for individual
donations to candidates and for candidate expenditures, it provides
eligible residents with four $25 vouchers that they can donate to
participating candidates of their choosing. Using public money garnered
from a property tax, it encourages more people to participate by giving
them the means to donate to candidates and pushes candidates to reach
out more broadly to the electorate. Research has shown that people who
donate to campaigns vote in very high numbers.
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Source: The Gotham Gazette (via The Empire Report)
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