About
An evidence system, not a blog
The State Ledger connects New Hampshire laws, spending, votes and local outcomes so claims can be tested against the evidence.
Who publishes this
The State Ledger is written and published by Aaron Gomo, an independent New Hampshire researcher and business owner. It is not affiliated with a party, a campaign, a candidate or an advocacy organisation, and it accepts no money from any of them.
Reach me at aaron.gomo@gmail.com. If something here is wrong, that address is the fastest way to get it fixed — see corrections.
The idea
Most political argument in New Hampshire is conducted in labels: tax relief, local control, smaller government, school choice. The State Ledger tries to do something narrower and more useful — follow a specific decision through to a specific consequence, and say what the record does and does not establish.
That means publishing findings that complicate the argument as well as findings that support it. A scorecard that finds only one thing is not measuring; it is campaigning.
Why it is built as a graph
A piece of research is not filed in a folder here. It names the issues, places, people, policies and bills it is actually about, and every page on the site is a query over those relationships.
One analysis of Education Freedom Account spending in Sullivan County is simultaneously education evidence, spending evidence, Sullivan County evidence and Claremont evidence. There is one record, and it appears everywhere it belongs. Nobody maintains a Property Taxes page.
That matters for a practical reason. A reader arrives with a question, not a taxonomy. Somebody who starts at their town should be able to reach an analysis they did not know to look for.
What is here now
- 9 published analyses
- 0 in review — sourced, but not yet checked against the primary record
- 44 issues, places, people, policies and bills
Reuse
Everything here is published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. Take the graphics, put them in a newsletter, print them for a meeting. See republishing for how to credit them.
How it is made
Markdown files in a public Git repository, built as a static site and deployed on commit. There is no database, no login and no comment system, which means the whole publication can be reviewed as a diff.
See methodology for the standard each analysis is held to.