BALLOT QUESTIONS
Dive deeper into Massachusetts’s 2026 ballot questions with CommonWealth Beacon’s Voter Guide. You’ll find concise summaries, historical context, and the latest coverage on each measure.
Mass. just tackled 9 ballot questions. Here’s where each landed, and what comes next.
Facing nine ballot questions, Bay Staters rejected efforts to throw out existing cannabis and gun laws, and to change an obscure tax cap law. They gave the green light to legislative transparency and Election Day voter registration while waving away a quest to replace party primaries with nonpartisan ones. A new state agency will now…
Voters subject governor and Legislature to public records law, but there’s no guarantee lawmakers will comply
All eyes will now turn to the House and Senate, where negotiators need to decide in the next eight weeks whether to follow through on an earlier proposal to substitute their own idea for public records access for the version that four out of five voters embraced.
New nature conservation fund wins voter approval, setting stage for funding fight
Passage of the ballot question now means a new nature conservation fund will be established to support clean drinking water, create and improve local parks, and protect wildlife habitats without raising taxes or levying a new one.
Primary election reform backers concede as ballot measure falls short
Voters rebuffed an attempt to inject more competition into the state’s low-energy elections by shuttling all candidates through a single primary contest, regardless of their party affiliation.
Backers of primary election overhaul say the proposal is ‘Massachusetts-grown.’ For years, its top donors funded similar efforts across the country.
Campaign finance records paint a more nuanced picture of who’s backing the measure, and color the Bay State as the next front in a national debate over systemic reforms intended to fix persistent electoral problems.
Ballotmania: Inside the flurry of measures upending Massachusetts politics
The record-tying number of initiatives on the ballot next week put Beacon Hill on the defensive, and it’s resurfaced thorny questions about the powers and pitfalls of lawmaking by statewide vote.
Political Notebook: Question 8 surpasses Question 3 as most expensive ballot question
An early-October burst of spending by opponents of an attempt to eliminate the recreational marijuana industry has pushed the total amount spent on that measure (Question 8) to nearly $6.5 million. That’s a good chunk more than the $5.9 million spent for and against the all-party primary question so far.
Here’s why you should view polling results on ballot questions differently than polls on races between candidates
We’ve been conditioned for years to read polls based on who is ahead, but we should not apply the same “horse race” lens used in candidate races to ballot question polls.
Question 3 debate highlights disagreements over fixing the lack of competition in Mass. elections
Danielle Allen, a Harvard University professor who founded the group advancing Question 3, and Jordan Berg Powers, chair of Voter Rights MA, which is opposing the ballot initiative, faced off in a debate about all-party primaries, which is shaping up to be perhaps the most controversial of the nine ballot questions that will appear before…
Baker joins Patrick in bipartisan all-party primary support
The Massachusetts Democratic Party and the Massachusetts Republican Party both oppose Question 3, which has drawn support from former Republican Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey and former MassGOP Chair Jennifer Nassour as well as Democrat Auditor Diana DiZoglio, former State Treasurer and MassDems Chair Steve Grossman and former US Rep. Joe Kennedy III, a Democrat.
New poll finds strong voter support for auditing the Legislature holding steady
For all of the sound and fury legislative leaders have raised, voter support for the audit law has not budged in two years.
Political Notebook: Teachers vs. Smith & Wesson
The state’s largest teachers union is now the single biggest financial backer of keeping a 2024 gun control law on the books.
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