Massachusetts voters will decide in November whether to make big changes to the state’s primary elections. But it’s not a first-in-the-nation experiment: several other states, including California, already have similar systems in which all candidates appear on the same primary ballot and the top two advance to the general election, even if they’re from the same party. This week on The Codcast, Chris Lisinski interviews Andrew Sinclair, a government professor at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California about how the Golden State’s primary framework came to be, what the effects have been, and what lessons Massachusetts might take.
ballot questions
Posted inState Government
Mail-in ballots have cut into popularity of early in-person voting
As voters this election cycle weigh ballot questions allowing people to register and vote on Election Day, and substituting an all-party primary in for the traditional party-based primaries, early in-person voting remains an enduring and often utilized election reform in Massachusetts.
Posted inBallot Questions
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.
Posted inState Government
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.
Posted inBallot Questions
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.
Posted inPublic Records
Senate ready to open access to legislative records, muddying outlook for ballot question
The Senate will take up a bill next week that would subject the governor’s office and Legislature to public records requirements, but huge questions still linger about how legislative action would affect a question on the November ballot seeking a similar goal.
Posted inBallot Questions
The tricky calculus of designing a ballot with nine questions
While law sets clear patterns for most of the ballot, officials need to lean more on the skills used by magazine or newspaper layout editors when it comes to statewide questions.
Posted inState Government
How the House’s sausage-making put transparency groups in a tough spot
A trio of good-government and transparency organizations backed the House’s proposal to craft a new public records framework for the Legislature, but they’re straining to avoid the riptide of the audit-the-Legislature debate that representatives tied to the same bill.
Posted inBallot Questions
Mass. high court strikes rent control question from ballot
The decision averts a months-long season of aggressive campaigning that seemed sure to generate tens of millions of dollars in spending on attack ads and dire warnings about economic upheaval.
Posted inBallot Questions
SJC blocks high-stakes income tax cut question from the November ballot
In a blockbuster ruling just as ballot measure campaigns submit their final signatures, Massachusetts’s highest court cut the fuse of a revenue bomb that was set to blow $5 billion out of the state budget. An initiative aiming to cut income taxes is blocked from the ballot because of errors in the attorney general’s summary.
Posted inOpinion
Lack of contested legislative races and overflow of ballot questions reflect democracy in decline
The many ballot questions but few contested legislative races is less a study in contrasts than a snapshot of correlates.
Posted inPolitics
Political Notebook: Healey underwater in new poll
A new MassINC Polling Group survey finds the incumbent governor with a net unfavorable rating among voters, but don’t overread the significance of one snapshot this far out from the election.
Posted inBallot Questions
Dueling housing ballot measures collide with frustrated lawmakers
While rent control proponents acknowledged the need for more housing production, they argued that the state cannot build its way out of the crisis and that supply-oriented solutions like the starter home proposal are not sufficient on their own. Rezoning proponents, meanwhile, warned that if lawmakers did not enact the lot size change, voters may opt for price controls on rents they say would stifle the housing production market.
Posted inCourts
Supreme Judicial Court says it’s up to Legislature, not judiciary, to set pay for court-appointed lawyers
Justices were wary of overstepping the “separation of powers” in a bid for courts to increase pay for attorneys who represent indigent defendants.
Posted inBallot Questions
Mass. Senate asks top state court to examine constitutionality of legislative reform ballot questions
For the first time in a decade, lawmakers exercised their authority to seek an advisory opinion from the state’s highest court, asking justices whether a pair of ballot questions on course to reach voters in November raise constitutional concerns.
Posted inPolitics
Often at odds, Mariano and Spilka united by ballot question frustration
As the Legislature prepares to review 11 ballot questions with major policymaking implications, the top two Democrats came together to complain that the process is “fraught with peril.”
Posted inGovernment
Boston tax relief response, ballot question reform emerge for Senate action
As political fallout from Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s ill-fated property tax plan continues, the Senate prepares to vote on a relief plan of its own, plus a measure to impose new scrutiny on ballot question electioneering.
Posted inState Government
Our top five Beacon Hill stories of 2025
The Democrats who control the levers of power in Massachusetts spent most of the year fretting about upheaval from the federal government and preparing for more expansive action down the line.
Posted inThe Codcast
The Legislature breaks for the holidays and ballot season heats up
This week on The Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon reporters Jennifer Smith and Chris Lisinski check in as Beacon Hill heads into its winter break. Chris looks back at the end of year lawmaking hustle, and what was left for 2026, then turns to a possibly record-smashing number of ballot questions that could land before voters next November.
Posted inBallot Questions
Ballot measures must clear courts, lawmakers, and voters
As the secretary of state’s office certifies hundreds of thousands of signatures submitted on behalf of the proposed 2026 ballot questions, campaigns and ballot initiative veterans estimate about half of the questions could be vulnerable to legal challenges, though not all may materialize.
Posted inThe Codcast
A super PAC longshot
This week on the Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon reporter Jennifer Smith talks with Harvard professor Larry Lessig about the ill-fated attempt to restrict Super PAC contributions in Massachusetts and the successful effort in Maine that was struck down by the lower court. The Maine coalition thinks it has a shot at convincing higher courts, not to overturn Citizens United but to embrace an originalist argument to limit money in politics.
Posted inBallot Questions
The voters have spoken on Questions 1, 2 – or have they?
With most votes counted, the legislative audit question was approved by a margin of 71.5 percent to 28.5 percent. The MCAS question’s margin was 59-41.
Posted inBallot Questions
Five ballot questions all have a workplace connection
The CommonWealth Beacon newsroom discussed the ballot sla.te this week on a special pre-Election Day episode of The Codcast. Some highlights of the conversation follow
