Aquene Freechild
Co-Director, Democracy Campaign
Freechild co-leads Public Citizen’s work building a broad movement to get money out of politics and ensure that everyone’s vote counts. She also leads Public Citizen’s advocacy work on election security and holding voting system vendors accountable for ensuring machines are safe from hackers. She co-founded the Secure Our Vote coalition, which works on the state and local level to encourage election officials to secure the vote and allow for recovery should a computer error or hack occur.
Freechild also works to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling, which opened the floodgates to corporate spending in elections. She led Public Citizen’s successful campaigns in Vermont, New Jersey, Illinois, Delaware and Washington states formally calling for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United. She also led Public Citizen’s outreach effort to build a broad consensus among nonprofits and membership organizations that a constitutional amendment is the necessary remedy for unbridled spending in elections. With local partners, she led the 2018 passage of the D.C. Fair Elections Act, the District of Columbia’s first small-donor matching campaign finance program.