MASSACHUSETTS VOTERS might soon have a record-breaking number of decisions to make about the direction the state takes.
Leaders of 11 different ballot question campaigns told CommonWealth Beacon they believe they have collected and filed enough signatures to keep their proposals in the mix, clearing the steepest hurdle en route to the 2026 election.
Several steps still need to happen before any of those questions are a lock, but if organizers maintain their current course, voters will be empowered with a suite of monumental policy decisions about slashing the state’s income tax rate by one-fifth, mandating rent control statewide, recriminalizing recreational marijuana, and more.
There’s a solid chance that 2026 becomes a historic election. The record for most statewide questions on the ballot in a single year is nine, which has happened three times – in 1994, 1976, and 1972 — according to Secretary of State William Galvin’s office.
In an interview, Galvin said the field is shaping up to “represent a high tide of ballot questions” — a fact he thinks reflects widespread discontent with the slow pace of lawmaking on Beacon Hill.
“There’s a unanimity of opinion among groups who don’t agree on much else that they’re not going to get anything done in the Legislature, so they’re going to go to the people,” he said.
One question is already guaranteed to go before voters next year. Opponents of the state’s sweeping new gun law have already successfully petitioned to put a repeal question before voters, using a different avenue than the initiative petition process all other proposals took. However, because the law was enacted late in the term, the repeal question was ineligible for the 2024 ballot and will instead appear in 2026.
If all 11 other questions still in the mix make it before voters, the total at next year’s election could reach an even dozen.
Proponents of each new measure (not the gun law repeal) must gather at least 74,574 signatures from registered voters and file them with local election officials for certification by the end of the day Wednesday.
Crossing the required threshold does not automatically guarantee a spot on the ballot. Signatures can be invalidated over technical issues, like improper marks on the form, and no more than one-quarter of the total haul can come from a single county.
Galvin will not officially announce which measures collected enough signatures until next month — once certification is done, campaigns must refile signatures with his office by December 3 — and several additional requirements will follow that.
But public announcements and on-the-ground intel so far offer an early glimpse at what’s still in play.
Here are the campaigns whose leaders feel confident about hitting the initial signature requirement and moving forward:
Rent control revival
The “Keep Massachusetts Home” campaign, led by advocacy group Homes for All, announced Tuesday that it gathered more than 124,000 signatures.
Their proposal would reverse the 1994 state ban on rent control — narrowly implemented by a ballot question — and in its place impose a statewide cap on rents at annual inflation or 5 percent, whichever is lower.
It would be one of the strictest rent control policies in the country and apply to all of Massachusetts, not just cities and towns that have expressed an interest in the idea. That big swing has triggered difficult decisions among progressives.
Income tax rate cut
A business-backed coalition called the Massachusetts Opportunity Alliance is confident it’s on track to ask voters whether to slash the state’s income tax from 5 percent to 4 percent over a three-year period.
Chris Anderson, president of the Massachusetts High Technology Council, said the push gathered more than 87,000 signatures. He argued that cutting the income tax by one-fifth could relieve voters from the state’s notoriously high cost of living.
“People who leave Massachusetts cite high costs, and taxes are the top of that list,” Anderson said.
But the proposal could also create massive headaches on Beacon Hill. Reducing the income tax rate by a percentage point could cut tax revenues by roughly $5 billion, experts say, at a time when elected officials are already grappling with budget pressures stemming from the federal government.
The question of whether to reduce the flat income tax rate could appear before voters just four years after passage of another ballot question that imposed a 4 percent surtax on the state’s highest earners.
Mandatory tax rebates
Another question the Mass. Opportunity Alliance is pushing would overhaul the state tax collection cap, a law known as Chapter 62F.
Anderson is also confident the measure is poised to advance after supporters collected more than 86,000 signatures.
The proposal would tweak a law enacted by voters in 1986, which requires the state to return money to taxpayers when revenues surpass a certain threshold. Under the question, Beacon Hill would be more likely to bump into that cap, limiting the amount of money the state can expect to collect and forcing more frequent rebates.
Chapter 62F had become largely forgotten until it burst back into the spotlight in 2022, when the state had to refund nearly $3 billion.
Recriminalize recreational marijuana
A decade after nearly 54 percent of voters supported legalizing recreational cannabis use, they might be asked whether to reverse course.
Organizers are “confident” they have submitted enough signatures to put a question on the 2026 ballot that would ask “if recreational marijuana should be repealed,” according to Wendy Wakeman, a spokesperson for the campaign.
“The rollout of marijuana sales in Massachusetts has been rife with corruption,” Wakeman said. “The results of legalized marijuana have been higher traffic incidents and problematic experiences of parents, employers, and mental-health professionals. Medical marijuana under our question would remain unchanged, but it’s time to take another look at the unfettered sale of a controversial product.”
Recreational marijuana has been popular among Bay Staters since it launched, but oversight of the industry has been marked by disruption and upheaval. Lawmakers are moving toward an overhaul of the Cannabis Control Commission.
Subject the governor’s office and Legislature to the public records law
Massachusetts and Michigan are the only two states where the Legislature and the governor’s office both consider themselves exempt from their public records laws.
Amid a sustained period of scrutiny on Beacon Hill, voters might be asked to change that through a ballot question that would require the governor’s office, the House, and the Senate to open up access to their records. (The question would not affect the judiciary, which is also exempt.)
Auditor Diana DiZoglio, a transparency crusader who took over leading the campaign, said Wednesday that supporters submitted more than 100,000 signatures.
“The people have had enough of the corrupt actions by top Massachusetts officials who fancy themselves above the law and hide public records regarding basics like financial data and state contracting information,” DiZoglio said.
Rein in legislative stipends
Transparency and good-government reformers also want to force the Legislature to curtail the use of stipend pay, and they say they submitted more than 90,000 signatures behind their question.
Under current policy, lawmakers can earn thousands of dollars more per year in “stipends” for holding positions in party leadership or atop legislative committees. Skeptics argue that system encourages representatives and senators to rubber-stamp what legislative leaders require, or risk getting low-paying assignments as retribution for stepping out of line.
“A legislator should work for the people, not for legislative leadership,” said Scotia Hille, executive director of Act on Mass. “Right now, the incentives are very much shifted in favor of legislative leadership.”
The proposal would significantly overhaul the stipend system and limit how many stipends a single lawmaker could earn.
House Speaker Ron Mariano has argued that legislative leaders are best equipped to determine which lawmakers should be awarded more responsibility and the pay that comes with it.
“Every organization, the longer you’re involved, the more work you do, and the higher responsibility you have, you get increases in pay,” he said in August, according to the State House News Service. “And I think it’s one of the ways to keep people thinking about this job as a potential career.”
All-party primaries
Another campaign is pushing a question that would replace the state’s partisan primary elections with an “all-party primary” system, in which all candidates would appear on a single primary ballot and the top two vote-getters would advance to the general election, even if they are from the same party.
Jesse Littlewood, the campaign manager, said organizers submitted about 98,000 signatures and so far have seen a high rate of validation. He said he’s “confident” the measure will advance.
Massachusetts has notoriously uncompetitive state elections, and Littlewood said more than half of contests here over the past decade have had just a single candidate. An all-party primary system, he argued, would encourage more people to run.
“A lack of competition slows down the process of hearing from voters, communicating and working with elected officials, and making sure that voters’ preferences are taken into account,” Littlewood said. “More competition means more responsiveness, that no votes are taken for granted, and that elected officials understand what their constituents really want to accomplish and are there to deliver for them.”
Election Day voter registration
Like the other activists who decided to pursue ballot questions, Galvin, the state’s top elections official, got tired of waiting for the Legislature to act on his push for Election Day voter registration.
So the secretary launched a campaign to circumvent Beacon Hill and go directly to the public with his proposal, which would allow eligible prospective voters to register at their polling place on Election Day.
Under current law, no one can newly register to vote, change their registration, or change their party affiliation in the 10 days before an election. Galvin said that deadline forces “literally tens of thousands of people in Massachusetts” to submit provisional ballots that are ultimately rejected every cycle.
“I am convinced the resistance in the Legislature is too great, and there’s still a gap we have in our electoral process,” he told CommonWealth Beacon. “It disproportionately affects poorer people who are tenants and move around [and] people of color.”
CPCS collective bargaining
Labor groups pushing a measure on behalf of public defenders say they’ve gathered more than 110,000 signatures.
The question, backed by SEIU Local 888 and the National Association of Government Employees, would clear the way for workers at the Committee for Public Counsel Services to collectively bargain.
SEIU Local 888 president Tom McKeever said the proposal could affect hundreds of attorneys and support staff at CPCS, which is aggressively staffing up using new state funding.
“These folks are doing yeoman’s work, and they want to be able to have the same rights as every other state employee in the Commonwealth,” McKeever said. “One hundred and eighty other state agencies have the right to collectively bargain, and CPCS does not.”
The question would not affect private bar advocates, whose pay dispute earlier this year created upheaval in the courts.
Starter home zoning
One question filed by Pioneer Institute senior housing fellow Andrew Mikula takes aim at the state’s housing crunch with a zoning reform.
Mikula said the campaign submitted about 103,000 signatures on the measure, which would prohibit municipalities from requiring minimum lot sizes for single-family homes to be greater than 5,000 square feet or to have at least 50 feet of frontage.
Supporters dubbed their campaign “Legalize Starter Homes,” and Mikula said the effort would clear the way for more development of smaller homes.
“Massachusetts is in the throes of a harrowing housing shortage that has raised prices and contributed to a lot of outmigration, especially among young people who are trying to form families for the first time,” he said. “By allowing homes to be built on smaller lots, academic research shows that facilitates the construction of smaller, lower-cost homes and also more homes.”
Land and water conservation fund
Rounding out the field, proponents say they gathered more than 100,000 signatures on a question that would redirect revenue from the state’s sales tax on sporting goods toward water and land conservation.
The “Protect Water and Nature” campaign said the measure could steer $100 million per year toward creating outdoor recreational spaces, preserving natural areas, and protecting drinking water.
“It’s clear that voters want to prioritize and protect our rivers, lakes, forests, farms, and other natural areas, especially as federal funding for land and water conservation is under threat,” said campaign supporter Andrew Sharpe. “With this ballot question, we can deliver clean water, healthy forests, more trails and parks, and access to the outdoors and nature for everyone in Massachusetts — all without raising taxes.”