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Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke at a campaign event in Portsmouth, N.H., on Saturday. This week she announced proposals for campaign finance reform.Credit Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist for The New York Times

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In a plan intended to upend a “political system hijacked by billionaires and special interests,” Hillary Rodham Clinton presented a set of proposals on Tuesday to curb anonymous political donations and bolster the influence of small donors through a federal matching program.

“Our democracy should be about expanding the franchise, not charging an entrance fee,” Mrs. Clinton said in a statement, reiterating her call to overturn the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling.

The issue of campaign finance reform has galvanized voters in both parties amid a roiling debate about what democracy means in an era when “super PACs” can raise and spend billions in support of candidates. Two candidates — Donald J. Trump and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont — have struck a chord by railing against the influence of such groups in politics.

Mrs. Clinton’s multiprong plan includes a push for legislation that would require greater public disclosure of political spending, establish a matching system for congressional and presidential candidates, and support a Securities and Exchange Commission rule requiring publicly traded companies to disclose political spending to shareholders.

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Mr. Sanders has, in his calls for reform, rejected money from super PACs and relied on low-dollar online donations. Mr. Trump has accused his Republican rivals of being captive to billionaire donors.

Other candidates, like Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, and former Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland, a Democrat, have also called for campaign finance reform.

Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard professor, said Sunday that he would enter the Democratic race for president on that single issue.

Mrs. Clinton’s plan, announced as polls show a rising threat from Mr. Sanders in New Hampshire, amounts to a wish list of ideas long advocated by critics of big money in politics, none of them elaborated in great detail.

For example, she proposed to match contributions by small donors with additional taxpayer funds, which would in theory diminish the influence of big donors by enhancing the collective financial clout of small ones. Her campaign did not offer many specifics for such a system, such as the amount of the match or — more crucially for critics — what such a program might cost.

Mrs. Clinton’s announcement was hailed by supporters of tighter financial rules for candidates, who have struggled to make political money a burning campaign issue despite surveys showing widespread disgust with existing rules.

The Age of Super PACs

“What she has proposed is both good policy and good politics,” said David Donnelly, the president of Every Voice, a Washington group that supports tougher campaign-finance and influence-peddling restrictions. “That’s why Clinton should actively campaign on this platform and push these solutions to the center of the debate in the days, weeks and months to come.”

Mrs. Clinton’s efforts to address the issue come even as she works to help Priorities USA Action, the main super PAC supporting her candidacy, raise hundreds of millions of dollars to compete with Republican groups that have far outraised their Democratic counterparts. Last month, Priorities said it had secured $20.5 million in commitments since July.

Republican critics were quick to call Mrs. Clinton’s plan hypocritical. “Hillary Clinton stopped making calls to her own super PAC donors long enough to call for an end to super PACs,” said Jeff Bechdel, a spokesman for America Rising, a conservative super PAC.

But Democrats say forgoing super PAC money would be tantamount to handing the election to Republicans, erasing any chance for reform.

To that end, Mrs. Clinton frequently tells donors that the only way to enact her plan and reform the system is to elect a Democrat. President Obama used a similar argument in his 2012 re-election fight, which relied heavily on the support of Priorities USA Action.

Mrs. Clinton said she would support new disclosure legislation, seeking to unearth the hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign money that flows through business trade groups and nonprofits, neither of which must disclose donors. She also backs a new Securities and Exchange Commission rule requiring publicly traded companies to disclose political activity.

She said she would also sign an executive order requiring federal contractors to fully disclose all political spending.

But each proposal has run into fierce resistance from Republicans and business groups. Shareholder activists and labor unions have been pushing for the S.E.C. rule for more than two years. Republicans have filibustered a legislative approach, known as the Disclose Act, offered by Democrats. Congressional Republicans also included a rider in a recent spending bill aimed at staving off a disclosure rule for federal contractors, something President Obama has signaled in the past that he might issue.

It was during Mrs. Clinton’s last run for president, in 2008, that the conservative group Citizens United tried to stop her with a critical documentary that led to the Supreme Court ruling that paved the way for super PACs.

Mrs. Clinton has recently started to remind voters of this personal connection to the case and the cause. “They took aim at me, but they ended up damaging our entire democracy,” she said at a Democratic dinner in Iowa last month, her voice breaking after delivering a fiery partisan speech. “We can’t let them pull that same trick again.”

Mrs. Clinton’s refrain that she would push for a constitutional amendment to overturn the Citizens United ruling has been met with particular skepticism.

“A lot of folks read today’s announcement, and with all due respect to the secretary and her team, 90 percent of those things aren’t going to happen anytime soon,” said Robert J. Jackson Jr., a law professor at Columbia who has advised Mrs. Clinton in the past. He added that the rule requiring disclosure by publicly traded companies seemed particularly doable and potentially effective.

Mrs. Clinton’s embrace of campaign finance reform might not only help her shore up support among liberals who are increasingly captivated by Mr. Sanders, but also help her and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, shed their image as overly cozy with the donor class. In recent years, the Clintons have come under criticism for their paid speeches to Wall Street banks and foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation. Under Mr. Clinton’s administration, donors were wooed with rounds of golf and nights in the Lincoln Bedroom.

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