U.S. city bans big companies' "political influence" in local elections

The city of Seattle in the U.S. state of Washington on Monday passed a bill to ban big companies such as Amazon from influencing local elections by making huge "political donations."

Seattle City Council voted unanimously for the Clean Campaigns Act, authored by its President Lorena Gonzalez, which prohibits companies from spending money on city elections if at least 5 percent of their stock is owned by foreign investors.

Seattle's home-grown tech giant Amazon, at least 9 percent of whose stock is foreign-owned, donated a record 1.5 million U.S. dollars to support its favored candidates in the city's council election in November 2019.

"We have an epidemic of big money in our elections, and this step helps to address the appearance and risk of corruption in our local elections," Gonzalez said.

"Essentially, this legislation closes a loophole that previously allowed foreign persons to use their ownership in a corporation to influence political activity," she added.

Seattle is the largest and the second U.S. city to pass such legislation, after St. Petersburg in the state of Florida, which limited foreign corporate influence in an ordinance approved in 2017.