Welcome back to the Saturday Send, a weekly digest of stories from CommonWealth Beacon that you may have missed.

This week, with Election Day around the corner, voters are busy weighing whether or not to reshape the state’s primary elections and parsing the particulars of the state tax cap formula. Indeed, ballot questions have taken over as the campaigns to watch in a season when few races for elected office in Massachusetts are generating much interest of their own. Chris Lisinski spoke with more than 15 legislative leaders and campaign backers about what this surge in ballot questions says about democracy in the Bay State.

Plus, an early-October burst of spending by opponents of Question 8 and the effort to repeal recreational marijuana has pushed the total amount spent on that measure to nearly $6.5 million — making it so far the most expensive question on this year’s ballot; families who had been planning on funds from a state rental subsidy program were left in the lurch when the state paused the third year of assistance indefinitely, and two single mothers have responded with a lawsuit against the Commonwealth; ballot question poll data should be interpreted differently than candidate polls; and more than a dozen individuals financially supporting Question 3 previously contributed millions of dollars toward similar campaigns in other states, a CommonWealth Beacon analysis of campaign finance records found.

Check out those stories below, and, as always, thanks for reading.

— The CommonWealth Beacon team