Illustration by Nick Galifianakis

Flashback Friday: Taking the laws into their own hands

August 8, 2025
By CommonWealth Beacon Staff

With nearly 50 initiative petitions filed by Wednesday’s deadline by groups hoping to put questions on the 2026 ballot, we’re revisiting John McDonough’s November 2002 article on the history and mechanics of ballot initiatives in Massachusetts for this Flashback Friday. 

Since 1919, Massachusetts voters have had more than 170 questions put before them, on topics ranging from legalizing the possession of marijuana to taxpayer funding for political campaigns to allocating highway taxes to fund mass transit. But the use of ballot initiatives begs the question: Is this the best way to make public policy? 

In a state where the Legislature is often slow to take up important issues, ballot questions can be a way around that, giving citizens a voice on important issues. 

Still, McDonough, a former state representative, notes that there need to be guardrails. 

“If it becomes primarily an instrument for corporate interests and rich guys to win new laws on the cheap,” he wrote, “and if the Legislature becomes increasingly brazen in undermining or manipulating the process, we may see something unprecedented since 1917: serious discussion of reforming a vehicle that, if treated with proper respect, is in no need of reform,” McDonough writes. “It’s hard to see how we could make the Massachusetts ballot-initiative process better. But it’s easy to see how we could make it worse.” 

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