Rachael Booth's Issue Positions (Political Courage Test)
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Rachael Booth has provided voters with clear stances on key issues by responding to the 2024 Political Courage Test.
New Hampshire State Legislative Election 2024 Political Courage Test
| Pro-choice | a) Do you generally support pro-choice or pro-life legislation? | ||
| Yes | b) Do you support legalizing abortion when the pregnancy resulted from incest or rape? | ||
| No | c) Do you support the prohibition of public funds (e.g. Medicaid) for organizations that perform abortions? | ||
| I believe that no one has the right to tell a woman what to do with her body - at ANY time during pregnancy. It is up to her, her doctor, and her conscience and government should not have a thing to do with it. | |||
| No | a) In order to balance the budget, do you support limiting state government spending on social programs (e.g. SNAP, TANF)? | ||
| Yes | b) Do you support a decrease in income taxes in order to promote economic growth? | ||
| Yes | c) Do you support a wealth tax in order to pay for public programs in your state? | ||
| I believe that the Social Security limit should be raised to at least $500,00 so that the wealthy pay their fair share into the program that even they receive. I also believe that taxes on the wealthy should be raised to be equal to or greater in percentage to the amount the poor and middle classes have to pay. If the middle class has to pay 30% of their meager salaries in taxes, then the wealthy should have to pay 50% or more as they did in the 50s and 60s when the economy was booming because everyone paid their fair share. | |||
| No | a) Do you support capital punishment for violent crimes? | ||
| No | b) Should an individual under 18 accused of a violent crime be prosecuted as an adult? | ||
| No | c) Do you support the enforcement of federal immigration laws by state and local police? | ||
| No | d) Do you support the use of private prisons? | ||
| No | e) Do you support mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenders? | ||
| Yes | f) Do you support the legalization of marijuana for recreational use in New Hampshire? | ||
| Yes | a) Do you support state government spending as a means of promoting economic growth (e.g. grants, tax incentives)? | ||
| No | b) Do you support reducing state government regulations on the private sector (e.g. for business or the environment)? | ||
| Yes | c) Do you support an increase of the minimum wage of New Hampshire? | ||
| Yes | d) Do you support government spending on affordable housing projects in New Hampshire? | ||
| The current school voucher system is a drain on the money coming into the schools, causing local municipalities to have to raise property taxes to help their schools. This is one of the main reasons taxes keep going up in NH. | |||
| Yes | a) Do you support adopting federal education standards (e.g. Common Core) in New Hampshire? | ||
| No | b) Do you support state funding for charter schools? | ||
| Yes | c) Do you support increasing teacher salaries AND/OR benefits in New Hampshire? | ||
| No | d) Should immigrants in the United States who graduate from New Hampshire high schools be eligible for in-state tuition at public universities, regardless of immigration status? | ||
| No | e) Do you support allowing schools to hire part-time teachers without requiring that they be certified by the State Board of Education? | ||
| State should have to comply with federal common core standards and then build on those minimum standards as the state education board sees fit. Immigrants should be eligible for in-state tuition at state universities ONLY if they are naturalized citizens or if they hold green cards allowing them to be in the country legally. Also, the current state educational voucher system allows people to either send their children to religious schools or to home school them with religious-based curriculum. Taxpayer money MUST NOT be used to teach our children anything but the normal federally mandated curriculum. Religous teaching belongs in the home or in houses of worship. | |||
| Yes | a) Do you support state funding for the development of renewable energy (e.g. solar, wind, geo-thermal)? | ||
| No | b) Do you support state governments allowing permits for drilling on public lands? | ||
| Yes | c) Do you support increasing state funding for clean drinking water initiatives? | ||
| Federal guidelines and experts are involved in the decision whether to drill on public lands. I believe the state should be able to deny drilling on state public lands but not on federal public lands. However, I do not believe that the federal government or the state should be allowed to drill on any PROTECTED public lands. | |||
| Yes | a)Do you support limiting campaign contributions from corporations, unions, and individuals? | ||
| Yes | b) Do you support the use of an independent or bipartisan commission for redistricting? | ||
| No | c) Do you support requiring a government-issued photo identification in order to vote at the polls? | ||
| Yes | d) Do you support automatic voter registration? | ||
| Yes | e) Do you support the implementation of ranked choice voting in New Hampshire? | ||
| It used to be that when you registered to vote, your signature was recorded and used during actual voting to prove who you are. You signed the paper to be able to vote at the polls and your signature was compared to the signature you signed when you registered. If they matched, you could vote; if they didn't, you couldn't. However, in a case where the signatures don't match because of some physical disability, then some kind of government-issued ID would be appropriate. I believe the current rules making people show an ID is one more thing devised to make it more difficult to vote. It should be EASY to vote, not harder. I also believe that the day of voting should be made a federal holiday so that everyone can vote easily and not worry about missing work to be able to vote. The current system, along with polling places in urban areas not having as many voting machines as suburban polling places is yet one more thing put into place in gerrymandered areas to ensure long enough lines that some people just don't go vote because they're going to waste so much time away from work standing in line. | |||
| Yes | a) Do you generally support gun-control legislation (e.g. red flag laws, closing the boyfriend loophole)? | ||
| Yes | b) Should background checks be required on gun sales between private citizens at gun shows? | ||
| No | c) Do you support the right to concealed carry in New Hampshire? | ||
| I am a gun owner but I believe that guns should be treated as the dangerous things they are. Like owning a car, each gun should be registered and insured. If a person does not lock up their guns properly and the gun is stolen and used in a felony, the gun owner should be held responsible as well. Plus everyone who wants to purchase a gun should have to show that they have taken a gun safety course before being allowed to buy one. Current gun laws don't go far enough to protect the populace. With laws that hold gun owners responsible for what happens with the guns they own, they'll be forced to understand their responsibility as a gun owner. Any gun that is sold in the US to anyone, regardless if the seller is a merchant or not, should be held to the same restrictions for sale. The current system allows people who shouldn't have a gun to buy one. If a person feels the need to carry a weapon, people should know they're carrying it, just as police do. | |||
| Yes | a) Should the state government increase funding for treatment facilities to combat opioid abuse? | ||
| Yes | b) Do you support a government-run (e.g. single-payer) healthcare program such as Medicare-for-All? | ||
| Yes | c) Should an individual have the right to choose to die (e.g. those with a terminal illness) through euthanasia? | ||
| Yes | d) Do you support mandating vaccinations (e.g. for school or employment)? | ||
| Yes | e) Do you support expanding paid family AND/OR medical leave benefits (e.g. maternity leave)? | ||
| Yes | f) Should the government be able to regulate the cost of prescription drugs? | ||
| Our current for-profit medical system in the US is the single most common reason for bankruptcy. People should not have to choose between buying food or paying for medication. We are one of the only countries in the world that allows out-of-control medical expsenses to have such an impact on their citizenry. One of the reasons medicines are so expensive is advertising. It costs millions of dollars to put a TV ad together, dollars that are passed on to the customer by raising prices for medications that can't even be purchased without a doctor's prescription. Other countries don't allow this to happen - with good reason. | |||
| Yes | a) Do you support inclusion of sexual orientation in New Hampshire's anti-discrimination laws? | ||
| Yes | b) Do you support the inclusion of gender identity in New Hampshire's anti-discrimination laws? | ||
| Yes | c) Do you support greater efforts by New Hampshire's state government in closing gender, racial, and other wage gaps? | ||
| My first priority, if elected, would be to enshrine a woman's right to choose what to do with her body into our state's constitution. Neither the state nor the federal government has any right to regulate what a woman does with her own body. They don't do anything like that for a male's right to his body autonomy. They openly allow the sale of erectile dysfunction drugs so can enjoy all the sexual activity he wants, but only a woman is forced into limitations on what she can do with her own body as a result of sexual activity. Until there are regulations on a man's reproductive responsibilites, there cannot and must not be any on a woman's. My second priority is to fix the state's broken and unconstitutional school voucher system. It is currently out of control. The money set aside for it is managed out of state and is unregulated by anyone in NH. The money set aside for it is taken out of the school budget, which does great damage to northern, poorer schools and they only way to get more money into the schools is to raise property taxes. Furthermore, the money is doled out for parents to do whatever they wish to do with it to educate their children - sending them to out-of-district schools or home school them. These are all things that used to be perfectly allowable - if the parents wanted to spend them money for these programs. But this is something conservatives have wanted to for a long time - destroying the public school systems. They're doing this by using state school budget money to pay for these programs and making it harder for the public schools to adequately educate our children. This cannot be allowed to happen, especially since taxpayers' money is being used in these programs to enroll children in religious-based schools or in religious-based home school curricula. This use of the program is also a built-in part of the voucher system. It does not say you can't use it to teach religion- based things so the architects of the program can argue they had no part in such a blatant unconsitutional program. It was very cleverly put in place. But it can't just be taken away suddenly because of the burden it would put on people using it now. The program would have to be ended slowly, except for the religous teaching aspect of it. |
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