How County Charter Amendments Seek to Rig the System

Many Pierce County voters have seen our No Rigging the System yard signs and bus signs and want to know what those signs mean.

It's very simple, really. Incumbent Pierce County politicians have put three charter amendments on this November's ballot that are designed to rig the system in their favor so that they can stay in office. These proposed amendments:

* extend their own term limits to over a decade
* reduce electoral competition and turnout by moving to odd-year elections
* double the amount of money incumbents can raise from their biggest contributors
* limit everyone else's access to the ballot by going to the state primary system

Here is an example of what we saw as recently as 2006. In that year there were five county level elections on the ballot with five incumbents running for re-election. Four of these incumbents ran unopposed and uncontested. The remaining incumbent had only token opposition. The election was decided before any of us even went to the polls!

The election in 2008 was a completely different story. In 2008, there were seven county level elections. Because of voter approved term limits and ranked choice voting, there were 22 candidates vying for those 7 seats. Voters had choices. There were competitive races. No incumbent ran unopposed.

Incumbents want the 2010 election to be just like 2006. They would like to be able to run for re-election in a "Top 1" election with no opposition. They want to rig the system in their own personal favor.

Tell the incumbents NO!

Reject all three charter amendments.

No Rigging the System.

Kelly Haughton
Citizens Against Rigging the System
RejectAll3.com