{"id":3993,"date":"2026-07-01T07:03:39","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T07:03:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bostonrelocationinsider.com\/?p=3993"},"modified":"2026-07-01T07:03:39","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T07:03:39","slug":"long-vexed-by-ballot-questions-mass-house-democrats-want-options-for-overhauling-process","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bostonrelocationinsider.com\/?p=3993","title":{"rendered":"Long vexed by ballot questions, Mass. House Democrats want options for overhauling process"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Massachusetts House lawmakers plan to pass legislation Wednesday targeting the state\u2019s ballot question process and the paid signature gatherers who help campaigns get their proposals before voters, acting on long-held frustrations with a system they view as an ineffective end run around the Legislature.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Beacon Hill Democrats trained their sights on ballot questions after the state\u2019s highest court blocked two initiative petitions from the ballot and effectively helped sink a third, in part because of errors made by the attorney general\u2019s office.<\/span><\/p>\n

House Speaker Ron Mariano said Tuesday that the House\u2019s bill is a bid to respond to \u201cwidespread concerns\u201d about ballot questions, by requiring campaigns to file financial reports monthly \u2014 they currently can go months without having to disclose their donors \u2014 and creating a commission to study \u201cbroad reforms\u201d to the process.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cOver the past several years, we have seen a growing number of well-funded special interest groups turn to the ballot to advance their agendas through one up-or-down vote, bypassing the negotiation and compromise inherent to the legislative process,\u201d Mariano said in a statement.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mariano and other legislative leaders have long chafed at lawmaking at the ballot box, arguing the process leaves voters with a binary choice on complicated laws.<\/span><\/p>\n

The push in the Legislature to reshape the initiative petition process, one of the few direct avenues residents have to propose and pass laws, comes during an election cycle in which a record number of ballot questions have advanced.<\/span><\/p>\n

Attorney General Andrea Campbell\u2019s office certified 44 proposals in September and ultimately 11 ballot questions, plus a referendum approved two years back that cleared the initial hurdles to move toward the November ballot. <\/span><\/p>\n

In the span of a week this month, however, the Supreme Judicial Court rejected questions that would establish rent control and slash the state income tax after finding Campbell incorrectly certified the rent control measure and crafted a \u201csignificantly misleading\u201d summary of the income tax proposal.<\/span><\/p>\n

And in an earlier advisory opinion, the high court cast doubt on Campbell\u2019s decision to certify a ballot question that would have reshaped the leadership stipends that state legislators collect. <\/span><\/p>\n

The House\u2019s bill would create a commission to study the attorney general\u2019s role in the ballot question process and submit recommendations for changing it by the end of 2027.<\/span><\/p>\n

The panel would consider whether the state\u2019s chief prosecutor should have more say in determining whether an initiative petition is constitutional and \u201cwhether adequate mechanisms exist to identify and correct a summary found to be inaccurate or misleading after it has been published or after signatures have been collected.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

State Representative Dan Hunt, a Dorchester Democrat who co-chairs the Legislature\u2019s Election Laws Committee, said Campbell faced a \u201cvery difficult job\u201d this year amid the deluge of ballot question submissions.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the whole point of the commission, is to study the process, hear from experts, hear from attorneys that have worked on these questions for decades, and potentially put together a product for the Legislature to consider,\u201d he said in an interview.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Hunt said lawmakers have been working on the bill for the better part of three and a half years. He said the legislation originally gained steam after the 2020 ballot question battle over expanding the state\u2019s \u201cRight to Repair Law,\u201d which saw tens of millions of dollars in funding flow to opponents and proponents.<\/span><\/p>\n

In that year\u2019s election, Hunt said the campaign to oppose the measure drew funding from out-of-state auto manufacturers between late January and early September, when ballot question committees are not required to disclose their finances.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe, as the general public, did not know until \u2026 like the first week in September where the money was coming from,\u201d Hunt said.<\/span><\/p>\n

The House\u2019s bill takes a similar approach to reworking the reporting schedule for ballot question campaigns as a version that passed the Senate earlier this year. <\/span><\/p>\n

Both bills require statewide ballot question committees to file monthly finance reports until 60 days before an election, and twice-monthly reports during the 60 days leading up to an election. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis bill would ensure that when powerful interests \u2014 whether they\u2019re in state or out of state \u2014 spend money to influence our state ballot questions, that the public can clearly and quickly see who\u2019s behind those efforts right now,\u201d said Geoff Foster, the executive director of Common Cause Massachusetts.<\/span><\/p>\n

The two chambers also take aim at paid signature gatherers by barring campaigns from compensating them based on the number of signatures they collect, including per-signature payments and signature-based bonuses. The two bills would require signature-collection forms used by paid signature gatherers to include a disclosure stating that the petition is being distributed by a paid individual.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tommy Hickey, who directed the campaign in favor of \u201cRight to Repair,\u201d said paid signature gatherers are \u201cimportant\u201d for campaigns looking to gain access to the ballot. But he said it\u2019s also \u201creally important to get folks who are signing things to know exactly who\u2019s paying to get these signature gatherers out there.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Harold Hubschman, the founder of the Massachusetts-based signature-gathering firm SignatureDrive.com, said he has spoken to lawyers about the proposed ban on per-signature compensation and is \u201cconfident\u201d the provision would be struck down in court.<\/span><\/p>\n

He also described the effort to create signature documents with disclosures for paid signature gatherers as a \u201cbad idea\u201d because it would require the secretary of state\u2019s office to create different forms for paid and nonpaid signature gatherers.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t have a problem with our petitioners being identified as being paid petitioners,\u201d he said in an interview. \u201cBut it is a nightmare \u2026 to introduce into the process two different versions of the same petition. That\u2019s the problem.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more Follow live updates on the Trump administration<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Massachusetts House lawmakers plan to pass legislation Wednesday targeting the state\u2019s ballot question process and the paid signature gatherers who help campaigns get their proposals before voters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3992,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"\nLong vexed by ballot questions, Mass. House Democrats want options for overhauling process - Boston Relocation Insider<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/bostonrelocationinsider.com\/?p=3993\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Long vexed by ballot questions, Mass. 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