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Episode 873: The Seattle Experiment

By Kenny Malone,

Sarah Kliff, Kenny Malone

Published November 2, 2018 at 4:39 PM EDT

It's no secret how elections work: A winning campaign costs a lot of money, so candidates court people who have the money to spend. Say, business interests. Then, when a politician takes office, their powerful donors have more influence than the average citizen. It's not a great system.

So Seattleites decided to tear it all up and try something radical: Fighting big money by flooding elections with even more money. The experiment... did not necessarily go as planned.

This episode is a collaboration with Vox's The Impact podcast.

Music: "Edge Of Fear" and "La Traicion."

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Kenny Malone

Kenny Malone hails from Meadville, PA where the zipper was invented, where Clark Gable’s mother is buried and where, in 2007, a wrecking ball broke free from a construction site, rolled down North Main Street and somehow wound up inside the trunk of a Ford Taurus sitting at a red light.

See stories by Kenny Malone

Sarah Kliff

Kenny Malone

Kenny Malone is a correspondent for NPR's Planet Money podcast. Before that, he was a reporter for WNYC's Only Human podcast. Before that, he was a reporter for Miami's WLRN. And before that, he was a reporter for his friend T.C.'s homemade newspaper, Neighborhood News.