well known lecturers, facilitating educational panels, and actively writing legislation and lobbying for reform on local and state levels. Students often partner with local community groups, statewide and national groups, and politicians to educate other citizens and actively promote legislation. Democracy Matters has also traditionally been geographically diverse, having had university chapters across the country. Raising awareness Democracy Matters members raise awareness and educate others on their campuses and in nearby communities by organizing campaigns that link the problems of the current campaign finance system to other important issues such as the environment, civil rights, foreign policy, and rising college tuition. Democracy Matters and its students aim to show that the issue of campaign finance is an interdisciplinary one, which impacts all people interested in social justice issues. Democracy Matters' official position in terms of how to improve the US campaign finance system is through the creation of an opt-in public financing system for national and statewide campaigns. Public financing of election campaigns, similar to the successful state systems in Maine, Arizona and Connecticut also known as "Voter/Citizen-Owned Elections", or "Fair Elections" provide an alternative for candidates to be publicly funded if they refuse to accept private donations from individuals or groups. This allows ordinary citizens, who lack the fiscal means, to run for office. Once elected, these publicly financed politicians are accountable to their constituents rather than to campaign contributors. Furthermore, they can use their time working on issues important to the people they represent rather than spending many hours each day on the phone "dialing for dollars" or attending fundraisers. In this respect, Democracy Matters has been very active in the fight for public financing of elections in New York state. Restore Democracy Fellowship In the summer of 2015, Democracy Matters started a new program entitled "Restore Democracy" focused on making campaign finance an issue in the 2016 presidential elections. The organization funded a handful of summer interns to travel to the first two primary states, Iowa and New Hampshire. These interns were tasked with attending presidential candidates' events to ask them questions about where they stood on the issue of public financing and campaign finance reform more broadly; building new chapters at large universities in the respective states to create pressure once the school year began; and creating coalitions with local leaders towards the end of building student-adult groups for reform. The organization also attempted to get