MASSACHUSETTS, meet your ballot — and get ready to hear a flood of arguments about marijuana pinned to “Question 8.”
A state panel ruled Tuesday that the campaign seeking to eliminate legalization for recreational cannabis use can proceed. Less than an hour later, elections officials announced the order in which all nine statewide ballot questions, tying the record field size last set in 1994, will appear to voters this fall.
The decision from the State Ballot Law Commission turned aside a last-ditch effort to block the anti-marijuana proposal, whose backers have long been beset by allegations of shady tactics to gather the voter signatures required to qualify.
Kevin Gilnack, a leader of cannabis advocacy group Equitable Opportunities Now, filed a complaint on July 9 claiming the campaign obtained signatures through “fraudulent means” or that some signatures should not have counted because of formatting problems.
A particularly large concern Gilnack raised was that 231 signatures — above the 123 needed to be tossed to sink the question — appeared on petition sheets that contained “stray marks.” Case law holds that signatures on forms with “additions or deletions” of any kind should not count.
But after holding hearings last week, the commission concluded that the sheets in question contained “errant pen marks that have no material effect on the remainder of the content of the petition.”
Gilnack, the commission wrote, failed to meet the “burden of proof to disqualify enough signatures.”
Massachusetts voters in 2016 approved a ballot question legalizing recreational marijuana use among Bay State adults. In the ensuing decade, cannabis has become a multibillion-dollar industry that’s generated significant tax revenues for the state and municipalities, overseen by a large, and sometimes chaotic, regulatory operation.
SAM Action Inc., a national organization opposing recreational drug use, is pushing the new ballot question to undo that decade-old vote. The group — which as a 501(c)(4) is not required to disclose its donors — provided the entirety of the $1.55 million the campaign raised last year.
“With surging emergency room visits, youth addiction, and more dangerous roads, it is time for Massachusetts to end this disastrous experiment,” Kevin Sabet, the president and CEO of Sam Action Inc., said in a statement celebrating the decision.
The State Ballot Law Commission in January turned aside another challenge to the marijuana question that hinged on whether campaigners misled voters by describing the proposal as dealing with other topics, such as affordable housing.
With the ballot order set Tuesday, the 2026 election officially tied a record for the most statewide questions in a single year, last reached when Bill Clinton was president.
The first question voters will consider is whether to require the Legislature and governor’s office to follow the public records law that already applies to most other government entities in Massachusetts. Subsequent questions deal with collective bargaining rights for employees of the Committee for Public Counsel Services (Question 2), replacing partisan primary elections with a single all-party primary (Question 3), allowing voters to register on Election Day (Question 4), overhauling the cap-and-rebate system for state tax collections (Question 5), earmarking a share of sales tax revenue from sporting goods for conservation (Question 6), allowing smaller lot sizes for single-family home zoning (Question 7), repealing recreational marijuana legalization (Question 8), and repealing a 2024 gun control law (Question 9).
Secretary of State William Galvin typically decides the order of questions himself with a goal of achieving a clean layout, but this year, he delegated that task to a top deputy because Galvin is leading the campaign for Election Day registration.
With so many questions in the mix, Galvin expects all ballots across the state will require at least two pages.
