Last year, Seattle voters passed an initiative to implement a so-called “democracy voucher” scheme. The scheme—pushed by a union front-group mis-named “Honest Elections Seattle”— creates a voucher program that gives every Seattle voter taxpayer money (up to $100 ) to donate to city candidates.
Seattle candidates can now opt into a system where voters can give their “free” $100 to candidates of their choosing. Another property tax hike would fund the $100 vouchers.
In other words, the liberal scheme forces homeowners to fund vouchers for others to give to candidates who pander to them. The initiative is estimated to cost $30 million over a 10-year period.
As could be expected, the initiative contains a loophole for labor unions.
Shift reported that rich outsiders were [hypocritically] pushing the initiative as a test. Seattle was the entry point to try and push a statewide initiative, all with a national agenda in mind.
Well, that’s exactly what’s happening now.
A group called Integrity Washington (another ironic name) is pushing a measure aimed at the November 2016 ballot that would allow Washington voters to make $150 in taxpayer-funded donations to legislative candidates every two years. Once again, in a move of blatant hypocrisy, rich outsiders are funding the measure.
The Seattle Times reports that Integrity Washington has “raised $250,000 from two out-of-state nonprofit groups and put down a $100,000 deposit toward a paid signature-gathering campaign.”
The two “out-of-state nonprofit groups” are the same ones that funded the “democracy voucher” initiative in Seattle: Every Voice (top donor is Sean Eldridge, husband to the millionaire owner of The New Republic and a former Democratic congressional candidate in New York) and Represent.Us.
How do backers propose to pay for the “taxpayer-funded donations”? One option is to cancel the state’s sales-tax exemption for nonresidents. But, backers are also contemplating “whether to include cancellation of that tax break in the initiative or leave it to the Legislature to figure out how to pay for the democracy credits.”
There are quite a few hurdles the hypocrites backing this latest move will have to jump over, starting with serious concerns over how to keep corruption and fraud out of such a system. But, in the end, the intentions of the liberals comes down to one simple mission: use taxpayer money to skew elections in favor of the far-Left.
Seattle was the first step, and Washington State appears to be the second, with national ambitions next.
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