MASSACHUSETTS VOTERS are on track to decide the most statewide ballot questions in a single cycle in 32 years. That will create a series of follow-up decisions for Beacon Hill.
Nine measures are in the mix for the November ballot, tying the record last set in 1994. They range in topics from recreational cannabis to a state tax cap to unionization rights for public defenders to voter registration.
So what happens if any or all of the proposals win at the polls? The answer is less straightforward than you might think.
Most of the questions this cycle, once approved, would have the same status as any other law put on the books through more traditional channels. But that also means the Legislature and governor have the same power to change or repeal entirely a ballot law after it passes as they do any other law enacted five or 50 years ago.
Legislative leaders have done just that in the past.
The most likely outcome is that if voters approve a question, it takes effect with little or no legislative interference. But just because lawmakers are unlikely to tinker with the will of the populace does not mean they can’t or won’t.
Are there limits on what Beacon Hill can do in response to a ballot question’s passage?
If the question proposes a new law instead of a constitutional amendment, not really.
Almost all of the measures in the mix this cycle are indeed proposed laws, so if they succeed, they would enter the codex known as the Massachusetts General Laws with the exact same legal standing as the myriad bills that move through the Legislature and are signed by the governor.
Mechanically, there’s no real obstacle to the Legislature voting to alter the ballot law or spike it after it wins approval. The barrier is instead a political one: Do lawmakers want to take on the public-image risks of interfering with what voters say they want?
What if a constitutional amendment were on the ballot instead?
Those questions are different. Changing the state Constitution is a multi-year process requiring support from both lawmakers and voters, so once an amendment takes effect, like the surtax on wealthy households approved in 2022, Beacon Hill cannot alter it without going back to the ballot box.
No constitutional amendments are on track to go before voters this year.
The only question that is not a traditional “initiative petition” this time around is an attempt to repeal the state’s 2024 gun control law. That measure directly asks voters whether the language the House, Senate, and governor approved two years ago should stand or be gotten rid of.
If a ballot question passes, how many different ways can it go from there?
There are three main routes Beacon Hill can pursue after a ballot question passes.
Option 1: Take no action, allowing the voter-approved measure to become law. This is the most common outcome.
Option 2: Come in afterward and change what voters approved.
Ballot questions are blunt instruments, and legislators often have thoughts on modifying what the proponents — or their lawyers — drafted.
The shape of that action can vary. Sometimes, lawmakers pursue significant changes that don’t entirely alter the core idea. That’s what happened in 2017, when the House and Senate rewrote a ballot law approved the prior year that legalized recreational cannabis. The Legislature made significant alterations to tax rates and regulatory structures, and it drew heavy blowback from the question’s proponents, but at the end of the day, marijuana was still legal.
Other times, policymakers are more heavy-handed. In 2000, nearly 60 percent of voters approved a proposal to lower the statewide income tax rate from 5.95 percent to 5 percent over a three-year period.
But in 2002, two years into the transition and with the state in a financial pinch, Beacon Hill Democrats voted to freeze the tax rate at 5.3 percent and condition the remaining reduction on achieving a series of economic milestones. Massachusetts did not hit the last of those targets — meaning the income tax rate did not fall all the way to 5 percent — until 2019, nearly two decades after voters had their say.
Option 3: Repeal, or just ignore, the new law.
It’s the most politically risky, but because an approved ballot question simply becomes a law, there’s no explicit barrier preventing the Legislature from approving a follow-up measure undoing it.
Just ask any veteran good-government reformer about the “clean elections” debacle. In 1998, two-thirds of voters supported a ballot question designed to make public funding available for electoral candidates if they agreed to significant limits on spending. Legislators recoiled at the idea, spent years refusing to fund the voter-approved system or fighting it in court, and then in 2003 tucked language into the annual state budget repealing the measure.
For a more recent example of the broad reach of legislative power, look only as far back as 2024, when 72 percent of voters decided the state auditor’s office should have the explicit authority to examine the Legislature. Top Democrats in both branches argue that the measure violates constitutional separation of powers, refusing to comply with it and simultaneously declining to ask the state’s highest court to intervene. Heading into another election season, the matter is about as unresolved — and as toxic — as ever.
Wouldn’t lawmakers face consequences if they didn’t follow what voters want?
To a degree, probably.
But it also depends on how significant their intervention is. Changing an effective date by a year or raising a particular threshold will land differently than, say, altogether undermining a law capping how much state government can collect in taxes.
If lawmakers wanted to make changes, they might not sweat the electoral consequences given the dismal competition in Massachusetts. Most House and Senate races have only a single candidate on the ballot, so frustrated voters often don’t have any real ability to toss an incumbent.
Does the margin of the vote on a ballot question change how lawmakers think about it?
Not all that much. Rent control has been banned since a 1994 ballot question that passed with 51.3 percent support and 48.7 percent opposition. Despite that narrow margin, reviving the idea has been more or less dead on arrival among legislative leaders for three-plus decades, even after organizers launched an ill-fated ballot campaign to revive it this year.
Contrast that with something like a tax deduction for charitable giving. Seventy-two percent of voters backed that idea in 2000, but that didn’t stop Beacon Hill from pausing the deduction in 2002 and keeping it on ice until 2023.
