(bright music) (uptempo music) - Welcome to "The Newsfeed."

I'm Paris Jackson.

We can't escape politics right now with the most consequential election of our time, just days away.

It got us thinking about the numbers on a national local scale, how much money goes into campaigns from massive contributions to small ones.

Forbes reports Vice President Kamala Harris's campaign and her combined affiliated groups have raised more than $1 billion and counting.

President Trump's campaign is brought in more than 375 million between November 15th, 2022 and September 30th, 2024 according to the Federal Election Commission.

For nearly 10 years, Seattle has set the blueprint for a strategy to reduce the influence of big money interest in local elections through a voter-approved democracy vouchers program.

Let's get to my conversation with Stony Brook associate sociology professor, Dr. Jennifer Heerwig, to see how these vouchers have widened the playing field.

(light music) For nearly a decade, democracy vouchers have been in play here in Seattle.

Has the program diversified the actual donor and candidate pool as intended?

- Based on my research, I can tell you that the program has diversified both the donor pool and the candidate pool.

So if we look at donors in Seattle, relative to before the program began in Seattle in 2017, there's been a huge increase in participation in local campaign finance.

So if you look at 2021, which was the third cycle of the program, there was actually a 700% increase in participation in local election financing relative to 2013 before the program began.

If we look inside the donor pool, we see a couple of interesting patterns.

Donors are now younger, on average, they also contain more people of color, and they also contain a higher share of lower income folks relative to traditional cash donors in your local elections here in Seattle.

The same kind of thing has happened for the candidate pool.

So if we look at candidates for both city council and for mayoral races, we see that on average, the candidates are now slightly younger than they were before the program began, and there are also more women candidates running for office in Seattle, and we've also seen an increase in the percentage of people of color running for mayor in Seattle, although not the same pattern for city council just yet.

- We were talking about the use of democracy vouchers a couple years ago for the last mayoral race.

Give us a little bit of insight because that's pretty unique.

- In 2021, which was the third cycle of the program, the program actually expanded to include the mayoral election.

So that was the first time that Seattleites were able to use their vouchers to support a mayoral candidate.

And that election drove record participation rates in Seattle in terms of local campaign financing and also across the nation.

- What would you say to voters that are civically engaged but may have not taken advantage of the democracy voucher program?

- Use your vouchers.

We know that candidates are reliant on money to finance their campaigns, but more importantly, early money is so important to the viability of a candidate.

- Thank you so much, Dr. Heerwig.

It was a pleasure speaking with you today.

- Thank you so much.

(light music) - Jennifer's new book is "Democracy Vouchers and the Promise of Fairer Elections in Seattle."

You can find it on Amazon.

(uptempo music) Don't forget to check out our comprehensive statewide Cascade PBS 2024 voter guide for all your election needs.

Head over to cascadepbs.org and click on Elections.

If you haven't registered to vote, there's still time to do so, only in person.

The Washington State Secretary's office says the deadline is November 5th, Election Day.

I'm Paris Jackson.

Thank you for watching "The Newsfeed," your destination for nonprofit northwest news.

Go to cascade pbs.org.

Now to "PBS NewsHour."

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