Bev Cotton: Legislators should respond to us, not the major donors

To The Daily Sun,

I think this year’s campaigns have been a perfect demonstration of why we need to take a hard look at reforming our campaign finance system. We are annoyed daily by the endless stream of mailers and ads on TV, largely financed by special interest groups, wealthy donors and corporations. Rarely are these types of donations made without the expectation of favorable treatment and preferred "status" access to the legislators they support. Often this "favorability" comes in the form of legislation that creates or cancels action damaging other industries, such as this year’s net metering bill.

Many states have banned corporate and LLC donations and have increased the transparency of political action groups. New Hampshire is not one of these states instituting improvements. We continue to allow a very broken system to persist. What would cure this, to a large extent, is a revision to a public financing system which favors small donations from our own citizens.

A great side effect of this would be greater access to our legislators rather than them responding to those expecting favors for their large dollar contributions. This can happen. We, the people, can support legislative efforts within our own state to make changes to the system that currently exists.

Do some research and encourage your legislators to support such action in the upcoming legislative session.

Bev Cotton

Weare