Maya’s running for our District County Council seat on a strong track record of electoral, legislative, and advocacy wins that are in deep solidarity with working families of every color, political stripe, origin, dietary restriction (wink)😉, ability, and neighborhood. Maya strongly believes that financially struggling home-owners, renters (tenants) juggling insanely rising costs of rent and living, seniors on fixed incomes; Black, Brown, Indigenous, Immigrant, LGBTQ+ and ethnically marginalized communities and individuals; young folks trying hard to see clear pathways into their futures, and all working poor people should be represented by people with direct, lived experience elected to serve in local, and state government. With Maya running this council seat, in arguably our most diverse and working class district, our District 2 voters can easily accomlish this!

 

Maya believes in doing the deep policy and legislative work that pushes us beyond what the status quo, and makes what business-as-usual says is impossible, POSSIBLE. We CAN put people over profit, and we can all thrive, we just need to stop boosting the profits of billionaires. We need to lock in, and focus on laws, policies and budgets that lift from the bottom, and bring every single person in our county into belonging, into thriving, and into a civic fabric that truly reflects the sum of us!

 

With serious policy chops, and elected experience in our County in 2025, Maya’s consistently shown up for people in her legislative, policy and advocacy work.

For those who must have a top three, Maya can list these* but they may shift, and Maya honestly rejects this top three campaign model for candidacies. Voters: don't you think we need more clarity about the backgrounds, politics and actual track records of the people we elect to make decisions that can have huge impact on our lives? *General election note: I've added a 4th.
 

• Affordable Housing for ALL.
• Extremely careful budgeting decisions that ensure we're meeting people's needs first, and not leaving anyone behind.
• Working for an Accountable, Transparent and Participatory county government.
• Firewalling our County to ensure that all people, and all people's rights, are secured and protected.
   

*These may shift over the course of the campaign, given the volatility of our federal situation. For instance, if you're following the news, Elections and Voting seem to be becoming a top priority. And, data privacy, mass surveillance, and AI –which are SOLIDLY in Maya's Policy and Advocacy wheelhouse –are a non-stop conversation as tech billionaires, given an obscene faucet of funding and permissive leeway by this administration, run rampant over people's rights and liberties. In 2025, we really need to know where the people we elect stand on literally everything!  We need to know folks' track record on defending mass incarceration, on secular services and shelter. We need to be able to trust the people we elect to make decisions that will protect the SUM of us, not just some of us. This is why Maya has offered her CORE VALUES framework to folks, and is clearly listing some examples of policy "wins" below to offer MUCH more clarity and transparency to voters.
 

 

CURRENT 2025 oNE-Year ELECTED ROLE:
Whatcom County Charter Review CommissionER WORK

 

Maya is/was our FIRST Latiné, out LGBTQ+ community member to be elected and serve on one of the two deliberative legislative bodies in our County! (Those are County Council & Charter Review Commission)

 

Supported our first woman, and first Democrat-endorsed Chair to lead our Charter Review Commission since 1978! 

 

Authored and brought forward an amendent to enact Equal Pay and Opportunity for the next Charter Review Commission.

 

Supported the Budget, Ombuds and Democracy-forward proposals of colleagues. 

 

Authored a BOLD proposal for Proportional & Single Winner Ranked Choice Voting which removes primaries and creates a one-time Elections Transition Commission to aid in a transparent, accountable and participatory shift from single winner elections to Ranked Choice Voting. This amendment, if we'd had the 10 votes needed to pass  it, would have secured more representational leadership in our County, and removed the grip of partisan politics on our electoral environment.

 

Authored and brought forward an Amendment that would have expanded the Preamble to include an acknowledgement of Tribal sovereignty, modernize our charter to use the word "people" rather than citizen to refer to County residents, as well as include the need to protect all beings who live in Whatcom County, and adding government accountabilty language.

 

Authored and brought forward an Amendment that would have EXPANDED the Rights sections of our County Charter, modernizing it to address people's rights, and adding four BOLD new sections to address: 

• Human Rights, to ensure that county governments decisions are in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including vetting the use and aquisition of technologies in accordance with human rights.
• People's Right to a Clean and Healthy Environment. This was actually inspired by Evo Morales' law in Bolivia which proposed protecting the rights of Pachamama, but Maya was careful to reframe for efficacy in our U.S. legal system as the human right to a clean and healthy environment, so as to be defensible in courts). This new section also proposed a Climate Justice Commission, which would review decisions of the county for their impact on Whatcom County's water supply, air quality, forests, plant, animal and human life, and issue recommendations regarding amendments to standing law and policy in order to guide the Council and Executives' decisions, and ensure that our County would adhering to this new right of every Whatcom County resident.
• Digital and Body Rights, to ensure the privacy rights of all people in Whatcom County to control access to and protect our own biometric and body-related data, in accordance with WA state's definitions of biometric data in the 2023 WA My Health My Data Act, which Maya helped push through our legislature!
• Labor Rights. to extend the Labor organizing protections she fought to help pass in Bellingham (Initiative 2021-3) in 2021 to the County as well. This would ensure the right of every county resident to organize their labor and/or workplace without interference or ostruction by County government, or any entity contracting with, or receiving County funds. 

You can read the exciting new laws Maya authored and proposed that would shore up and expanded people's rights in Whatcom County, here! All of them are incredibly timely, and needed.

 

Authored and brought forward two different amendments to INCREASE PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT AND ACCOUNTABILITY, and require County Council Members to hold a Town Hall at least once per year in their respective Districts. (And, if you follow our County's socials, you may notice our County has suddenly been working on having much more interaction with the public lately, including meetings and an open house! That's a WIN.)

 

Authored and brought forward a BOLD AND TIMELY amendent to address the County's Acquisition and Use of New Technologies, Data Management, and Online Presence. This was a HEFTY amendment, with new constructive law!
It would have:

• Enacted Safeguards and guardrails on the County's Aquisition and Use of AI, invasive or potentially rights-violating technologies, including technologies that remove human decisions, or utilize automated decisions in a manner that could produce bias (discrimination).
• Updated our County's Web interfaces for user-friendliness, and also instituted a Public Data Dashboard where people could access publicly available information and data without having to use the cumbersome public records request process. The goal for this dashboard was to also offer a portal that eventually enabled INPUT on the County's programmatic work, building out web infrastructure to support Participatory County Budgeting, and a community-driven process of budget prioritization, which would ideally happen through in-person votes of residents at neighborhood or precinct-level Town Halls, as well!
• Mandate the collection and publishing of data regarding law enforcement contact with people who are, or appear to be, unhoused, with safeguards to protect unhoused people's privacy and security.
• Ensure that the data privacy and security of the people in Whatcom County is both fostered and protected, with specific data retention and deletion guidelines for all photographic images capturing members of the public, including but not limited to ALPRs, Security footage, traffic cameras, and street or parking-facing cameras; and requiring that the county's networks use robust security measures, and ensure that the public can also use privacy protecting software on County networks.

 

Overall, Maya authored a whole entire body of new, constructive charter-worthy laws that would create the strong legal foundation needed to bring forward budget, law and policy in accordance with the intersectional justice core values framework Maya has offered to voters. This Charter Review Commission was unable to pass any truly trailblazing charter review amendments this year, due to not being able to meet our 10-vote supermajority requirement, but Maya was committed to moving the needle forward for the people anyway! And has! And that's a WIN for us, and win for our County. 

Read all of Maya's Charter Review proposals here! 

 

 

Here are some Legislative, POLICY, and ADVOCACY wins! 

Things Maya's fought for:

 

Advocated hard for the People's Privacy Act in the 2025 WA Legislative session, and for the first time since it was filed several years ago, we got it a hearing! This is a universal data privacy bill that we desparately needed to help people shore up our personal firewalls against this administration. Unfortunately, WA's budget was tight, and the bill's fiscal note (that means how much it would cost) was prohibitive. It stalled in committee. Big tech also of course hated it, so there's that.

 

Killed an LGBTQ+ internet censorship bill in WA Leg 2025 that legislators and main sponsors did not understand was actually masquerading as a Childrens' online safety bill, but would have rolled out a Heritage Foundation Agenda in WA state. Also helped block a bill that would have enabled the budget and installation of real time cameras and acoustic listening devices in Black and Brown neihborhoods all over our state! 

 

Pushed our WA My Health My Data Act through the WA Legislature in 2023. This law protects YOUR health data! Also advocated for shield laws and the protection of patients and providers seeking abortion and gender-affirming healthcare, blocked a digital ID bill, and advocated for and against many others!

 

Worked with the WA Low Income Housing Alliance in 2023 to lay the first year of advocacy groundwork for Rent Stabilization – which we just finally WON in 2025! WA State just passed HB1217 after three solid years of intense advocacy. Many of us were in it for the long haul.

 

WA People's Privacy: Advocated against the passage of the initial harmful version of SB 5536 on the floor in our 2023 WA Leg session which sought to RE-criminalize drug USE and possession. Mobilized orgs and leaders all over our state to help kill the bill by driving emergency bill comments by drafting and turning around a County-wide sign on letter over the course just four hours, on a weekend, which Maya sent to the entire Senate and House, while ACLU WA lobbied up a storm in Olympia and Maya simultaneously drove a statewide effort via WA PP's coalitional network to push bill comments. Our effort stopped a harmful bill version, and forced the Governor to call a special session and re-work of the bill to enact more harm reduction and diversion measures. For folks who don't know: SB 5536 was the bill that re-criminalized drug possession, and newly criminalized use in public spaces, which disproportionately criminalizes, targets, and harms unhoused people. People need housing, treatment and services, not handcuffs.

 

2023-24 (Winter) Authored and rallied a community sign on letter demanding that Bellingham and Whatcom County governments work together to open emergency, secular and public, cold-weather shelter to save lives and limbs. This was effective, and leaders made it happen, and then expanded the efforts the following year. 24-7, 365-day SECULAR and PUBICLY RUN sheltering remains and need, and thus it is still part of my platform in my run for County Council!

 

With a coalition of national organizations over the past five years, Maya:
    +Pressured Meta to encrypt DMs (Facebook).

    +Blocked bad internet bills nationally and in WA state.

    +Raised the issue of algorithmic price-fixing and bias in algorithms with housing advocates in 2022-23 while advocating for Sen. Hasegawa's Automated Decision Systems bill.

    +Gave input on the Federal Trade Commissions' Commercial Data Surveillance rulemaking process. 

    +Advocated for the FCC to restore Net Neutrality (Trump just rolled this back.)

    +Spoke as part of international trade roundtables to give input on "Digital Trade" and AI, and local/regional tables.

    +Offered input to the DOJ regarding the harms and risks of biometric surveillance tech.

    +Offered input to the City of Bellingham regarding harms and risks of aquiring rapid DNA collection tech.
    +Worked with Seattle Solidarity and the national StopShotspotter campaign to help prevent the purchase and rollout of ShotSpotter in Black and Brown neighborhoods in Seattle. Seattle City Council rolled that progress back.

     +Worked with Seattle Solidarity and ACLU WA to raise objection to the rollout of ALPRS on every SPD vehicle and other city vehicles. We had some limited success: reducing retention time and requiring localized storage of data.

    +has boosted many worker and union calls to action, recognizing that tech justice and data privacy intersect with labor, and surveillance of workers, as well as gig-worker wages, AI replacement of jobs, and even bias in online job application processes -- all of these are increasingly impacting workers.

    ...and so many other successful efforts... Way too many to list.

Maya's policy chops are kind of a little bit fierce! 🤷🏼‍♀️😊 In 2025, that's a quality to lean TOWARD, not away from, in our elected officials.
   

In 2021, was a central member of the People First Bellingham Campaign, and worked tirelessly to help voters pass 1) a ban on the City of Bellingham’s use of face recognition & predictive policing software. 2) a ban on the use of city funds to impede workers from organizing/forming a union!

 

Maya founded WA People's Privacy in Dec. 2021 to push people's legislative advocacy on privacy, tech justice, tech equity and data privacy policy and law. She was invited to join ACLU WA's Tech Equity Coalition (TEC) after successful passage of two of the People First Bellingham ballot initiatives! The TEC wound down when the former ACLU staffer who convened it left to attend law school.

 

Whatcom Democrats Resolutions Maya has authored and passed!

Resolutions are policy advocacy documents. They basically outline a set of facts a list of "Whereas" paragraphs, and then call for action at the end, in a "therefore be it resolved" section. Political parties use these to ask elected officials to vote a certain way or take certain actions. Elected legislative bodies use these to ask for fellow electeds and governments to take action and votes, too. 

 

Maya's resolutions have consistently pushed to make the impossible possible. If we're not using the party as a muscle to leverage real changes that lift poor and working class people into wellness, what are we even doing?

 

June/July 2024 - Passed on second reading in July 2024 by unanimous vote. 

Resolution in Support of a WA Unhoused Persons Bill of Rights

in anticipation of the Grants' Pass SCOTUS Decision which allowed the criminalization of people for sleeping outside in public, this framework for permanently ending our unhoused crisis not only cross-pollinated with state lawmakers, it's also what enabled Mayor Kim Lund's Executive Order on Housing shortly thereafter. The resolution outlines a trailblazing and sweeping road map to HOUSING EVERYONE, and demands a whole host of actions, policies and legislation of our electeds and our agencies to get it done!

 

March 2025 - passed with 2/3 majority on 1st reading with no discussion in April general meeting.

1) Poverty Resolution 1: Urging the WA Legislature to designate socio-economic status as a protected class

 

March 2025 - passed with near-unanimous vote on 2nd reading in June general meeting. 

2) Poverty Resolution 2: Calling on Whatcom County lawmakers to rectify unequal pay and opportunity across elected County Official Roles

©️2025, People for Maya Morales Campaign, All rights reserved