USED TO CONTROLLING how laws get made on Beacon Hill, lawmakers are frustrated with the initiative petition process and are expressing interest in changing it in ways that may make it more arduous for citizen reformers.
“Those who are paying now for signature gatherers, those who are flooding the airways, are really kind of perverting what the process is supposed to be,” said Rep. Michael Day of Stoneham, a Joint Committee on Initiative Petitions member, referring to the 1918 law that allows voters to create laws through ballot initiatives.
Campaigns backing initiative petitions must meet signature collection requirements to move their proposal forward. The first round requirement is equal to 3 percent of the votes cast for governor in the most recent gubernatorial election; this election cycle that was 74,574, according to the Secretary of State’s office. If the Legislature takes no action on an initiative petition before the May 5th deadline, campaigns must gather another 12,429 signatures, equal to 0.5 percent of votes cast in the latest gubernatorial election. No more than 25 percent of signatures can come from the same county.
Day and other lawmakers argue that paid signature collectors undermine the intention behind the collection requirement. They say it’s meant to be a high enough threshold to show there is enough support among voters for a proposed law that circumvents the normal legislative process.
Proponents of ballot initiatives say signature gatherers are crucial to getting the signatures needed to get their issues on the ballot. Also, campaigns backing ballot initiatives say they wouldn’t be pursuing ballot questions if the Legislature took action on the issues their initiatives address.
“I guess what the bigger question for us as a Legislature is what to do with this? Because the process is no longer what it was back in 1916,” Day said during an initiative petition committee hearing on two tax-related ballot initiatives in March. “For better or worse, we’re looking at these kinds of paid drives to get out there and get on the ballot to circumvent where we are.”
In response, Jim Stergios, executive director of Pioneer Institute and proponent of the tax-related initiative petitions, requested to ask Day a question. Committee co-chair, Sen. Cindy Friedman said, “No. We ask the questions.”
Stergios shared his questions with the New Service. One of them was whether the original intention behind law establishing the ballot initiative process — to empower voters to make laws when the Legislature fails to act — still applies.
“Aren’t we seeing precisely those conditions today?” Stergios said.
There have been rumblings on Beacon Hill surrounding reforms of the initiative petition for decades that have grown louder recently as a record number of 12 are making their way to the 2026 ballot. This is up from five in 2024 and would exceed the record of nine reached in 1972, 1976 and 1994, according to the secretary of state’s website.
Senate President Karen Spilka and House Speaker Ron Mariano have made it clear they share other lawmakers’ concerns with the initiative petition process. Gov. Maura Healey has outwardly opposed specific initiative petitions and remained on the sidelines when it comes to reforming the process. When asked during a March 22 appearance on “Keller @ Large” if she shared Mariano and Spilka’s reservations with the process, Healey said it’s “there for people to exercise and to use.”
Harold Hubschman, founder and president of the prominent signature gathering firm SignatureDrive.com, said campaigns rely on paid signature gatherers because it’s extremely difficult to advance their petitions otherwise. He said very few citizens in Massachusetts could collect the required 74,574 signatures without funding.
Hubschman believes the process has worked well overall in Massachusetts, noting 90% of paid signature gatherers since 2009 worked for him. But if lawmakers want to keep money out of ballot initiative campaigns, Hubschman suggested slashing the requirement down to a quarter of what it currently is.
“People hire us not because they have money. People hire us because it’s hard to do,” Hubschman said. “If they were genuinely concerned about the process being more egalitarian and more open to the public, they need to make it easier, not harder, to get on the ballot.”
The Senate approved a bill (S 2898) in January to require more public reporting on ballot question fundraising and spending. Mariano has indicated the House plans to take it up. A matching House bill (H 868) is pending in the House Ways and Means Committee.
An amendment to the bill from Sen. Barry Finegold, who is on the initiative petitions committee, prohibits ballot campaigns from offering rewards based on the number of signatures a gatherer collects, like a pay-per-signature arrangement. During the Senate session, Finegold noted the amendment is intended to prevent fraud in the signature gathering process.
Hubschman has no problem with the bill’s disclosure requirements. But he balked at the idea of banning pay-per-signature agreements, saying similar measures were deemed unconstitutional in other states.
The 26 states that allow initiative or referendum petitions have varying laws surrounding paid signature gatherers. Ten states ban pay-per-signature arrangements and Massachusetts is one of 16 states that allow them, according to Ballotpedia, a nonprofit online political encyclopedia.
Courts have offered conflicting opinions. Records show federal courts have struck down laws banning pay-per-signature arrangements in states including Washington and Ohio finding they violate the First Amendment. Meanwhile, in 2023, the Arizona Supreme Court have upheld a law banning per-signature payments in the state, per Associated Press reporting. And in 2006, an appeals court upheld an Oregon law banning pay-per-signature collections.
Day has also suggested that the attorney general should assess whether an initiative petition is constitutional when she certifies proposals. Currently, the attorney general is charged with certifying initiative petitions based on a limited set of criteria outlined in the Constitution.
His idea comes as lawmakers and Auditor Diana DiZoglio have been feuding over a 2024 voter-approved audit law. Lawmakers have raised constitutionality concerns with the voter law while DiZoglio has argued it offers much-needed transparency. The Senate has also taken an unusual step seeking the Supreme Judicial Court’s opinion on the constitutionality of two initiative petitions that would subject the Legislature and governor’s office to public records law and overhaul how legislative stipends are structured.
Friedman said she wasn’t sure the Legislature could give the attorney general the authority to rule on the constitutionality of a proposed law.
The Arlington Democrat, who has expressed similar reservations as her colleagues with the process, remained tight-lipped about specific reforms to the process, saying lawmakers have to determine what they can do under the Constitution.
“I think we’re all going to be looking at what more we can do,” Friedman said. “Because it really is not so much the number of ballot questions – I mean, I wish there weren’t so many – but I understand that. But it’s just the way that the process is being used that is so deeply concerning.”
Massachusetts lawmakers aren’t alone in their itching to reform the ballot initiative process.
In one month at the start of the year, more than 65 bills aimed at reforming the ballot process were filed across the country, according to the Fairness Project, a group that supports initiative petitions. The group tracked 148 bills across 15 legislatures in 2025 and found the volume of legislation aimed at ballot measures has risen by 95% since 2023.
Many of the reforms are taking place in Republican states like North Dakota, South Dakota, Florida and Utah where voters are fed-up with one-party control, per the New York Times reporting. A recently enacted law in Florida, which already had some of the strictest prerequisites for ballot initiatives, added a host of new requirements, fees and penalties surrounding signature collections. As a result, all of the 22 initiative petitions proposed this year failed to qualify for the ballot.
As Bay State lawmakers are assessing whether to take action on this year’s ballot initiatives, the renewed push to reform the process alongside the sudden rise in ballot initiatives signals growing tensions between voters and their elected officials.