Seattle Prop 1a and Prop 1b: Difference between revisions

''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.<ref>https://www.axios.com/local/seattle/2022/07/07/seattles-approval-voting-initiative-explained</ref> 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").<ref>https://www.axios.com/local/seattle/2022/07/15/seattle-city-council-ranked-choice-voting-ballot</ref> The Seattle City Council clearly had no conflict of interest when they rewrote and renamed this"Initiative initiative134" to "Prop 1a".

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