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.
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.
Deep-pocketed donors flood the ballot-question field with cash
Newly filed financial reports shed light on this election’s battle lines, which will pit business groups against unions, the marijuana industry against an out-of-state opponent, and transparency advocates against Beacon Hill itself.
Let’s say a ballot question passes in November. What happens next?
Nine ballot questions are in the mix for November. Here’s what you need to know about what happens if they win approval from voters.
Odd bedfellows: Progressive critics join Democratic, Republican party bosses to oppose election reform ballot question
“It’s not that our current system is good. It’s that this alternate one is worse,” says Jonathan Cohn, policy director for Progressive Mass.
Signature cases add fuel to calls for ballot access reform
Legislative negotiators are finalizing the details of a bill requiring more frequent financial disclosures for statewide ballot question campaigns and implementing guardrails around the use of paid signature gatherers.
An effort to boost nature, backed by big-money donors, lands in the middle of Mass. ballot question mania
As the campaign shifts from ballot-qualifying to general election mode, what the end result will be of all the money raised and spent, all the signatures collected and ads likely to come, and all the potential friction introduced with Beacon Hill — even if the question passes this fall — is for now unclear.
Healey throws support behind conservation ballot question
Asked if she has a position on any of the questions yet, Healey told GBH’s Jim Braude and Margery Eagan, “Not on all of them, and you know, there are some that I’ve sort of taken a closer look at as a matter of priority,” before mentioning the conservation measure.
On second thought: Late-moving legislative action injects ‘ambiguity’ into ballot questions
Legislative leaders opted not to engage in serious negotiations with initiative petition proponents earlier in the year, when a compromise might have averted measures going to the ballot. And now, they’re weighing last-minute action that could reshape or even upend a pair of decisions voters will make.
Political Notebook: House Speaker foretells Senate tax swerve
He was joking when he described “fortune-telling” as a preferred pastime, but House Speaker Ron Mariano still managed to divine the way electoral politics would affect a Senate tax cap proposal.
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