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

Pierce County Better Government League "reforms"

Supporters and board members of the Pierce County Better (sic) Government League have proposed and passed reforms in past elections. The impact of these "reforms" has been to reduce voter turnout for county level offices. How did they do that?

In 2007, they put on the ballot charter amendments to make the Auditor and the Assessor-Treasurer positions non-partisan as well as to extend the term limits of these positions from two terms to three terms.

In 2008, there were seven county level races on the ballot. The one race shifted to being non-partisan was the Assessor-Treasurer race. All other county level races showed increases in voter participation between 2004 and 2008. The non-partisan Assessor-Treasurer race saw a decline in voter participation from 70.4% of registered voters in 2004 to 63.7% in 2008. As this comparison shows, the decline in voter participation was due entirely to the "reform" foisted on us by the council members who are now behind the PCBGL.

This year's PCBGL amendments 1 and 2 would shift some county level races (but not all) to odd-numbered years. This will also decrease voter participation as fewer people vote in odd-numbered years. In addition, PCBGL's amendment 3 would shift more of the voting to the even lower turnout August primary in odd-numbered years. This will result in even lower turnout.

Voters should reject all three charter amendments this year. These "reforms" are designed to reduce voter participation in county level elections.