I was asked recently to characterize the unique strengths of the New Hampshire legislature. Size: largest state legislature by almost a factor of two. We have 400 House reps. The second biggest is Pennsylvania, with 204.
Cost: $100 per year per legislator (plus mileage) compensation. This means it is a hobby, not a job.
Character: the House is not much of a stepping-stone to higher office, especially because the Senate is so small, with only 24 senators. This means we get more retirees with lots of life experience instead of young, ambitious politicos.
Inexpensive campaigns: it is unusual for a returning Rep to spend $1,000 on their campaign. That means they can be self-funded, so they are less beholden to donors and leadership.
Bottom-up: in many places, including the US Congress, the leadership has a lot of power. Committee chairs can kill bills on their own, and leadership controls large pools of campaign funds. In NH, leadership has very little real power. They can give someone the committee they want; they can give them an aisle seat in the House and maybe a good parking space. But all bills get voted on by the full body. Since many heads are better than a few, we get more intelligence applied to problems than in most places.
Corruption: Since we are so large and there is little money needed to campaign, there is almost no opportunity for corruption, especially in the House.
I’d say perhaps the main drawback is our large turnover, with about 1/3 of the body every election; there is less institutional knowledge than there could be. This tends to give more power to the executive branch employees. They can more easily snow the inexperienced Reps and get their way.
