Seattle Prop 1a and Prop 1b

Seattle Prop 1a and Prop 1b are propositions placed on the ballot n 2022 to introduce new voting systems for the selection of the mayor, the city attorney, and the council members for the city of Seattle, Washington.

Election

The election between these initiatives became a contest between three choices:

1. The status quo ("no" on everything)
2. Using top-two approval voting for primary election, with general election for the offices in question ("Yes on Prop 1a")
3. Using top-four ranked-choice voting for the primary election ("Yes on Prop 1b")

The ballot is phrased such that voters need to answer two questions. The first question is whether to change the current choose-one top-two primary. The second question is whether to choose "Prop 1a" or "Prop 1b" as the new election method.

Initiative 134

Initiative 134 (I-134) was written in 2021, with signature gathering starting in February 2021. I-134 was intended to provide a simple "yes"/"no" selection to mandate the use of different flavors of approval voting for the selection of the mayor, the city attorney, and the council members in each district of Seattle. The organization promoting this initiative ("Seattle Approves") was formed in 2020, and gathered signatures throughout 2021 and in the beginning of 2022. By July 2022, the city attorney announced that sufficient signatures had been gathered, and that it had qualified for the November 2022 ballot. In July 2022, (before Initiative 134 was printed onto ballots), the Seattle City Council added another election method for voters to consider in November (described below as "Prop 1b"). The Seattle City Council clearly had no conflict of interest when they rewrote and renamed "Initiative 134" to "Prop 1a".

Prop 1a

Proposition 1a (or "Prop 1a") is effectively the same as Initiative 134. It calls calls for Seattle's mayor, the city attorney, and the city council members to be selected using different flavors of approval voting:

1. In the primary election, all candidates for a given office are printed on the ballot. The two candidates approved by the most voters advance to the general election. Using the proposed method, voters would be allowed to mark their ballots with as many candidates as they approve of.
2. In the general election, the top-two contenders from the primary election would be printed on the ballot. The candidate receiving the most votes would be elected.

To quote the King County Voters' Guide:

Proposition 1A (Initiative 134) would allow voters in primary elections for Mayor, City Attorney, and City Council to select on the ballot as many candidates as they approve of for each office. The two candidates receiving the most votes for each office would advance to the general election, consistent with state law. The City would consult with King County to include instructions on the primary ballot such as “vote for AS MANY as you approve of” for each office.

The system described in Prop 1a is the same system used in the city of St. Louis in 2021 to elect its mayor.

The full text of Prop 1a is available as a PDF.

Prop 1b

Proposition 1b (or "Prop 1b") calls for the mayor, the city attorney, and the council members from all of the districts to be selected with rules similar to a top-four primary, but only two candidates are selected. Then, when the general election is held, the two candidates receiving the most transferred votes for the office in question would compete in a general election head-to-head.. The primary election wouldn't be eliminated, and the voting machines would need to be changed to handle ranked elections.

To quote the King County Voters' Guide:

As an alternative, the Seattle City Council and Mayor have proposed Proposition 1B (Ordinance 126625), which would allow primary election voters for Mayor, City Attorney, and City Council to rank candidates by preference. In the first round of processing, each voter’s top preference would be counted. The candidate receiving the fewest would be eliminated. Successive rounds of counting would eliminate one candidate each round, counting each voter’s top preference among remaining candidates, until two candidates remain to proceed to the general election. King County would include instructions on the ballot for voters.

FairVote lobbied the Seattle City Council to place this measure on the ballot. The Seattle City Council agreed.

The full text of Prop 1b is available as a PDF.

Commentary

Some argued that few people in Seattle truly understands that there are three choices, because of the way the ballot is structured (in the form of two questions). The Stranger endorsed the status quo, preferring to leave the current choose-one top-two primary in place.

Links

• Ballotpedia: https://ballotpedia.org/Seattle,_Washington,_Proposition_1A_and_1B,_Approval_Voting_Initiative_and_Ranked-Choice_Voting_Measure_(November_2022)
• King County Voter Guide: https://info.kingcounty.gov/kcelections/Vote/contests/ballotmeasures.aspx?lang=en-US&cid=100557&groupname=City Archive.org: https://web.archive.org/web/20221017083842/https://info.kingcounty.gov/kcelections/Vote/contests/ballotmeasures.aspx?lang=en-US&cid=100557&groupname=City