Election 2026: Your Ballot Questions, Explained

ELECTION 2026 · EDITION 2

Your Ballot Questions, Explained

Welcome back to CommonWealth Beacon‘s Election 2026 newsletter run.

There is a lot to sort through before you head to the polls on November 3, and much of the space on your ballot will be dedicated to eight initiative petitions and one repeal referendum.

For more than 100 years, voters have been able to make law at the ballot box, but eagerness to bypass the Legislature was extremely high this cycle. Many campaign organizers say they pursued questions because they’re frustrated at Beacon Hill’s slow pace, and the frequency with which popular ideas die without a vote.

For those who don’t have the time to read an 88-page state-issued voter guide or need help parsing the record-tying number of ballot questions, CommonWealth Beacon’s 2026 special ballot section — in partnership with The Bay State Banner and El Planeta — is aimed at making the lift more manageable.

Here’s what you’ll be deciding at the voting booth:

The cycle began with one question locked in: a proposal to repeal the state’s 2024 gun law. Another 11 cleared the 74,574 certified signatures needed to make it over the first hurdle.

A dozen ballot questions would have smashed the state record. But the state’s highest court introduced another wrinkle, tossing two of the highest profile questions of the cycle — one that sought to impose statewide rent control and one that sought to slash the income tax — on what were essentially technicalities. Based on an advisory opinion from the Supreme Judicial Court, the attorney general’s office withdrew its certification of another question that would have created a new stipend system for lawmakers who chair committees.

The nine ballot questions that are left range from the esoteric — voters are being asked to decide whether to change the formulation of Massachusetts’s tax cap — to the aim of making Beacon Hill more transparent and transforming the state’s primary system.

Legislators have decried the number of ballot questions as proof that deep-pocketed donors are out to buy new laws, a claim not entirely without merit. Heading into October, campaign filings showed more than $21 million raised and almost $17 million spent on the various ballot questions.

Ballot measure backers say initiative petitions are some of the more effective ways to advocate for policies that the Legislature could back-burner indefinitely.

Organized labor is out in force this cycle, at this point mostly looking to fight a proposal to repeal the 2024 gun law that created a host of new firearm regulations and a proposal that would create an all-party primary system. But just as in 2024, organizing itself is on the ballot — this time for employees of the state’s public defender agency.

The tension around ballot measures is often Beacon Hill versus everyone else, but this cycle features a sequel to one of the uglier recent battles at the ballot box.

Two years ago, voters overwhelmingly approved a question that explicitly gave Auditor Diana DiZoglio the power to probe the Legislature. Democratic legislative leaders have pushed back, arguing it violates the separation of powers clause in the state constitution. In a follow-up this year, as the fight over the audit continues, DiZoglio and a coalition of transparency advocates have put forward a ballot question seeking to subject the Legislature and governor’s office to the state’s public records law.

In response, House and Senate lawmakers have passed different bills that would create a new, more limited public records law than the ballot question envisions. A final draft of that bill could emerge from a conference committee at any point before the end of the year, including after the election — possibly superseding what voters just decided.

But Question 1 isn’t the only measure that could be disrupted by lawmakers this cycle. Senators also included language in their version of the economic development bill, currently under negotiation, that could take the wind out of Question 5 — the proposal to trigger more frequent rebates to taxpayers. That legislation would introduce a new eligibility criterion that would essentially make refunds less frequent if the ballot question passes.

While lawmakers are defending the moves as sensible options to protect state revenues and make sure that public records law and the audit pass constitutional muster, advocates across political lines are seething.

Scotia Hille, executive director of the Act on Mass group supporting a measure to expand the public records law, told CommonWealth Beacon that the possibility of late-emerging legislation on ballot question subjects is troubling.

“The fact that the Legislature can try everything to fight a ballot question, and then, in the last few days of the legislative session, pass legislation that would essentially nullify the impact of the ballot question — I think it absolutely sets an alarming precedent about our right as citizens to make laws by initiative petition,” Hille said.

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