Here are my recommendations for how I believe people should vote on the nine đź« initiative petitions that Massachusetts residents are voting on this year.
TLDR
I recommend you vote:
- YES on Question 1
- YES on Question 2
- NO on Question 3
- YES on Question 4
- NO on Question 5 (strong recommendation)
- NO on Question 6
- YES on Question 7
- NO on Question 8
- YES on Question 9
Question 1: Expanding the Public Records Law
I recommend a YES vote on Question 1.
Question 1 would amend Massachusetts’s public records law to cover the legislature. Currently the legislature has exempted itself from our public records law.
In the majority of U.S. states, the legislature is subject to the public records laws that apply to other public entities. It is a stain on Massachusetts democracy that our legislature has exempted itself from our public records law. It is also consistent with our legislature’s long-time pattern of claiming to be transparent without actually being transparent.
Opponents of this question make three arguments:
The proposed wording does not adequately protect the privacy of correspondence between constituents and legislators.
The proposed wording only protects deliberative records about legislation during the legislation process; once a bill is no longer under consideration these records would become subject to the law. This will create a “chilling effect” and prevent legislatures from speaking frankly while crafting legislation.
There are constitutional issues with the secretary of state, an official of the executive branch, enforcing the public records law on the legislative branch.
My response to all of these is the same: the sky has not fallen in the states where the legislatures are subject to public records laws. The risks enumerated above have not materialized. Therefore, clearly it is possible to write the law in such a way that it avoids them. The Massachusetts legislature should have done that of its own volition rather than forcing the people to attempt to get it passed via initiative petition. If the initiative petition is flawed, then they will just have to amend the law to address those flaws after the petition passes.
Question 2: Collective Bargaining for CPCS Employees
I recommend a YES vote on Question 2.
Question 2 would permit the employees of the Committee for Public Counsel Services to form a labor union. If they subsequently choose to do so, then the CPSC would be legally required to recognize and engage in collective bargaining with the union.
The reasons given by opponents for why CPSC employees should not be allowed to unionize are nothing more than typical anti-union bullshit. I’m not going to lend them legitimacy by saying anything more than that about them.
Simply put, everyone who works for a living should be allowed to unionize, and tar and feathers is too good for anyone who says otherwise.
Question 3: State Primary Elections
I recommend a NO vote on Question 3.
Question 3 would replace the Massachusetts party primary system with an all-party primary. If passed, then rather than having separate ballots for each party’s primary, all candidates from all parties would appear on the same ballot, and the first- and second-place candidates in the primary, regardless of party, would advance to the general election.
Simply put, this is a back-door attempt to get more Republicans into state office in districts where the majority of voters would not want to elect a Republican. Given that the Republican party has gone wholly fascist and is literally doing everything within its power to destroy U.S. democracy, we cannot afford any changes to state elections which would increase the likelihood of Republicans being elected.
Here’s how that would work… Many similar Democratic candidates run in the primary for a particular office. The GOP, on the other hand, only runs two candidates. The many Democratic candidates split the Democratic votes into many more slices than the two GOP candidates split the Republican vote. As a result, the Republican candidates get more votes despite there being fewer Republicans voting overall. Two things make this scenario possible:
- It is common for many Democratic candidates to run in a primary for an open seat.
- The Massachusetts Democratic party has shitty party discipline, whereas the GOP has excellent party discipline.
We can reconsider this proposal when the people who support democracy have retaken control in Washington, fixed the damage to our democracy done by Trump and the GOP, and enacted strong guardrails to prevent them from doing it again. Until then, you should recognize this as a backdoor effort to subvert Massachusetts democracy, and you should vote against it.
A better solution to most of the problems this ballot question purports to be trying to solve is ranked choice voting.
Question 4: Election Day Registration
I recommend a YES vote on Question 4.
Question 4 would allow voters to register to vote or change their registration on election day.
The Republican party opposes this ballot question. That should be all you need to know.
Some members of the legislature claim that the proposed law as written has problems. My answer to that for this ballot question is the same as my answer to the same objection to Question 1: if there are problems with the law, then the legislature can, and should, fix them after it’s passed.
You may have noticed a pattern here: the legislature claiming they can’t support a particular initiative petition because there are structural problems with the proposed law as written and the legislature can’t amend it. This is always a bullshit, chickenshit excuse, because the legislature can always amend such laws after they are passed to fix any actual problems with them.
Twenty-four states and Washington, D.C. have same-day registration. This is not rocket science. This is not an unsolved problem. It’s just as embarrassing that Massachusetts doesn’t have it as it is that our legislature is exempt from our public records law. We should fix that.
Question 5: State Revenue Limit & Rebate
I strongly recommend a NO vote on Question 5.
Question 5 is a steep tax cut for rich people masking as a fiscal responsibility measure. It’s a bullshit backdoor attempt to repeal the millionaire tax which we recently passed.
If the people of Massachusetts are dumb enough to pass this ballot measure than services provided by state and local governments will dramatically suffer as a result.
Please vote against this.
Question 6: Natural Resource Conservation Fund
I recommend a NO vote on Question 6.
Question 6 would establish a new natural resource conservation fund, funded by diverting existing sales tax revenue currently being spent on other things.
As much as I respect the work of Mass Audubon, the sponsor of this ballot question, and as important as I think it is to conserve natural resources in Massachusetts, this would be a bad law, and Mass Audubon is being dishonest about it.
Mass Audubon says, “Question 6 doesn’t raise taxes or create a new tax.” While this is strictly true, the proposed law would redirect tens of millions of dollars of existing annual tax revenue to a new purpose. That revenue is currently being used for othe purposes. Therefore, either (a) the other things that revenue is being used for will need to stop or (b) the legislature will need to find a way to replace that revenue to continue providing those other services.
Furthermore, in Massachusetts ballot questions aren’t actually allowed to control appropriations, so even if this law is passed, it will still be entirely up to the legislature whether to fund the problem proposed by the ballot question.
Question 7: Single Family Homes
I recommend a YES vote on Question 7.
Question 7 would require Massachusetts cities and towns to allow single-family homes to be built on lot sizes as small as 5,000 square feet. Currently many communities require much larger lots for single-family homes.
The moneyed backers of this question are real estate developers, real estate agents, and banks, all of whom stands to make more money if there are more houses being sold. So there is definitely financial interest in this question backing, which we should examine seriously.
Having said that, just because a ballot question is going to make people money doesn’t automatically make it illegitimate, an I think in this particular case the interests of the people who want to make more money and the interest of people who want more affordable housing in Massachusetts are actually aligned.
I am apparently not alone in that; this ballot question has a lot of supporters, including many progressive organizations and many politicians.
Ultimately, for me this comes down to two things:
- Many cities and towns in Massachusetts have exhorbitantly high lot size requirements for new homes (e.g., in Lincoln, a notoriously expensive place to live, the minimum lot size is two acres). These are often in place as a strategy for keeping out low- and middle-income families, which is abhorrent.
- We’re in a housing crisis. I’m probably going to support just about anything which helps more housing get built.
Question 8: Prohibit Retail Sale of Adult Recreational Use Marijuana
I recommend a NO vote on Question 8.
Question 8 would repeal the legalization of recreational marijuana sales in Massachusetts.
The proponents for this ballot question are lying with statistics. Since they can’t make their case by telling the truth, their argument for changing the status quo fails on the merits and should be rejected by voters.
The text in favor of this question submitted to the secretary state says, among other things, “Since commercial legislation, marijuana is now the most common drug found in fatal car accidents in Massachusetts.” I checked their web site and found nothing there to support this assertion.
What I found instead is that the very first claim given on the website is, “42% of drivers in fatal crashes tested positive for THC from marijuana.”
However, if you click through to the article they link below that claim, you learn two things:
- That study was in a single Ohio county, which is obviously not in any way representative of anything happening in Massachusetts.
- The study concluded, “The high rate of THC positivity remained consistent over six years and was unaffected by the state’s legalization of recreational cannabis during the study period,” i.e., the study the proponents of this ballot question cite to support their argument actually undermines it.
This is some serious bullshit right here. Please do not reward it with a YES vote.
Question 9: Firearms Regulation
I recommend a YES vote on Question 9.
Question 9 is gun nuts trying to repeal a good gun safety law passed in 2024.
Voting YES preserves the law; voting NO would repeal it.
Massachusetts has the second-lowest per capita rate of gun fatalities in the country. We’re doing the right thing, and we should keep doing the right thing. Tell the gun nuts to pound sand; vote YES to preserve gun safety legislation in Massachusetts.
