Free State Index

The Problem

The Free State Project has real, measurable policy wins in New Hampshire. But the data was scattered across government sites, news articles, and advocacy reports. Nobody had put the numbers in one place.

I needed a site that showed documented legislative wins, quality-of-life rankings, and divergence from national trends. Credible, minimal, automated. No manual updates, no editorializing. Just verified outcomes.

How I Built It

Data Architecture

Seven JSON files cover the full policy landscape:

// wins.json — Verified legislative outcomes
{
  "title": "Constitutional Carry",
  "year": 2017,
  "category": "Second Amendment",
  "source": "RSA 159:6",
  "description": "Permitless concealed carry enacted"
}

// rankings.json — Quality-of-life metrics
{
  "metric": "Economic Freedom",
  "rank": 1,
  "source": "Fraser Institute 2024",
  "total_states": 50
}

// legislators.json — 423 state legislators with liberty ratings
{
  "name": "Jane Smith",
  "district": "Rockingham 12",
  "party": "R",
  "rating": 92,
  "chamber": "house"
}

Every data point comes from government records or institutional research. No predictions. No projections. Only what actually happened.

Automation Pipeline

A daily agent scans for:

• New legislative wins from NH General Court records
• Updated rankings from institutional sources
• Cultural milestones (PorcFest attendance, FSP member counts)
• Bills advancing in the current session

New data hits the JSON files, pushes to GitHub, Netlify auto-deploys. No manual updates.

Design Philosophy

Interactive Features

• Chart.js — Policy trends over time
• Leaflet.js maps — District-level legislator ratings
• Searchable table — Filter by name, district, party, rating
• Sortable columns — Rank by any field

Tech Stack

No frameworks. No build tools beyond Tailwind. Static files: HTML, CSS, JS, JSON. Fast and simple to maintain.

Results

Live, automated, open source. Every metric sourced and verified.