Our Goals for Reform to Achieve Political Equality for All:

1. Establish small donor, voter-owned honest elections

2. End gerrymandering and modernize voting

3. Eradicate Super PACs & neutralize Citizens United

4. Expose unlimited, anonymous Dark Money

5. Eliminate Pay-to-Play lobbyist & contractor donations

6. Enforce campaign finance laws & close loopholes

Read on for more on our current work to advance these solutions below!

1. Establish small donor, voter-owned honest elections

The current system of privately-funded elections silences the voices of everyday people, favoring wealthy interest groups. For our representative democracy to be fully "of, by, and for the people," the solution is publicly funded elections. Open Democracy Action champions a solution we call Voter-Owned Elections.

With Voter-Owned elections, every voter is given $100 "Civic Dollars” (four certificates worth $25 each) that they can donate to candidates of their choice. For candidates to qualify to receive Civic Dollars, they would need to agree to run clean campaigns, including the following:

No Large Donations: Candidates who receive Civic Dollars would contractually agree to not accept large private donations for the primary and general elections

No Outside Money: Participating candidates and their committees would agree to not accept donations from individuals residing outside New Hampshire and would request that so-called “independent groups” not spend money on their behalf; only citizens eligible to vote for the candidate would be allowed to contribute to their campaign

No Corporate Contributions: A companion bill would prevent non-persons like corporations, unions, and other special interests from funding political campaigns

Full Transparency: Candidates and political committees campaigning in New Hampshire would be required to regularly and publicly disclose their donors online

Voter-Owned Elections One-Pager HERE.

2. End gerrymandering and modernize voting

Open Democracy Action's Map-A-Thon team of independent, citizen mappers worked closely with Granite Staters before and after the last census to help communities understand the importance of fair maps, and the negative impact gerrymandering has on voters. The Map-A-Thon team created a criteria for fair maps, analyzed the legislature proposed maps against the Map-A-Thon's independently created fair maps, and shared these findings with voters. All of the Map-A-Thon's analyses, reports, videos, and education are available at: https://www.opendemocracyaction.org/maps

Open Democracy Action also supports legislation that would modernize voting and ensure every voter is able to exercise their freedom to vote, including but not limited to no-excuse absentee balloting and an online voter registration portal. 

3. Eradicate Super PACs & neutralize Citizens United

4. Expose unlimited, anonymous Secret Money

5. Eliminate Pay-to-Play lobbyist & contractor donations

6. Enforce campaign finance laws & close loopholes

We are working to close the "LLC Loophole," a loophole in NH campaign finance law that allows individuals to donate more than the limit - anonymously - to campaigns through multiple LLCs often created for just this purpose. The LLC Loophole has been used by both Democrat and Republican donors. Out-of-state campaign donors and even foreign campaign donors could be bankrolling ads and candidates in New Hampshire, and voters would never know having only the cover name of the LLC which gave the money. One-pager on ODA's most recent legislative fix HERE.