Under
Buckley, RSA 664:5, V insults the First Amendment. The New Hampshire statute limits the same kind of independent expenditures that the FEC Act attempted to regulate, and the New Hampshire law purports to cap those expenditures at precisely the same level ($1,000) as the FEC Act set.
To be sure, the price of political expression has changed—but the changes work against the state's position. We take judicial notice that political campaigns are much more expensive now than when
Buckley was decided two decades ago. The price of television and newspaper advertisements has ballooned, as have the costs associated with printing and distributing leaflets. To illustrate the point, N–PAC's plan to distribute 30,000 fliers at various public events held around the state on July 4, 1996, would have required that it spend in excess of $3,000. In our judgment, this single example makes painfully apparent how severely
RSA 664:5, V restricts political speech. The First Amendment does not tolerate such drastic limitations of protected political advocacy.