44 of NH’s 2018 primary candidates responded to the survey. Below are their summarized responses ordered alphabetically by last name for State House candidates and then for State Senate candidates. If you’d like to see a particular candidate’s full response, you can click here to look it up alphabetically by the candidate’s last name.
The NH Community Rights Amendment seeks to codify in our NH Constitution's Bill of Rights the community right to local democratic decision-making authority regarding social and environmental issues that affect the health, safety, and well-being of individuals, communities, and ecosystems. While this right and authority is already supported in Articles 1, 2, 8, 10, and 32 of our N.H. State Constitution’s Bill of Rights, it is not yet specifically recognized. Enumerating this right to local self-government in our Bill of Rights would address our underlying civil rights problems in two main ways. Firstly, it would recognize that local self-determination is an inherent and unalienable right. Secondly, it would nullify corporate use of state preemption and permitting bodies to override the collective will of a community to adopt local laws to protect its municipality’s people and ecosystems. Importantly, the amendment could not be used to adopt local laws attempting to restrict or weaken existing state and federal rights and protections for people.
