2026 State Ballot Initiatives
The Massachusetts state legislature is an institution that’s routinely criticized for intransparency and inefficiency, controlled top-down via a patronage system (leadership chooses who gets certain committee assignments and, thus, who gets paid more), that’s long frustrated many who’ve wanted to see any sort of progressive change happen in Massachusetts. The newest, and most public, evidence of this is the record number of ballot measures set to be up for a vote this coming November, in 11 months. In Massachusetts, anyone who manages to collect around 75,000 signatures can get a referendum on the ballot, which, if passed, makes a new law, thus circumventing the legislature (though these referenda are non-binding, technically; after Question 1, which would have allowed the State Auditor to audit the legislature, passed with flying colors in 2024, they didn’t really comply with it).
I’m not going to talk about all of these ballot initiatives (you can skim them here), but the three that I’ve developed strong opinions on are below.
This is a statewide petition that basically reinstitutes the ban on recreational marijuana. I skimmed a few Reddit threads where I found multiple formal and informal reports that the petitioners collecting signatures for it by either blatantly misrepresenting what the petition was about or just lying about which ballot initiative they were signing for. I’m doubtful it’ll pass because any initiative where you need to lie just to get signatures clearly doesn’t have very much popular support. I think it’s likely to drive voter turnout among those who want to see it fail.
Ever since a ballot initiative in 1994 banned rent control in Massachusetts, affordable housing advocates have been attempting to get the legislature to enact some form of rent stabilization (i.e., not allowing the rent to increase by more than a certain percent a year, typically 5 to 10%). After all, we have a pretty bad housing affordability crisis in America right now. This ballot initiative would enforce statewide rent stabilization at a strict 5% cap, unless a building is less than ten years old, or if it were an owner-occupied building with four or fewer units.
3. Reduce state income taxes from 5% to 4%
Massachusetts has a 5% state income tax, which supplies over half the state budget. So if this one passed it would be horrifying because it would effectively slash the state budget by 10%. Here’s a story from WBUR about how it got on the ballot in the first place (essentially some special interest group paid a lot of money to collect signatures to get it on the ballot). I think it’s a continuation of the repeatedly-disproven concept of trickle-down economics, as well as a response from the ultra-wealthy on the success of the Millionaires’ Tax passed in 2022. Cities in the Commonwealth already suffer from a lowering of state funding over the years, so decreasing it further will do absolutely nothing to help cities, communities, or families, and the costs saved by the reduction in income tax would just end up eating into the wallets of average people in different ways. If you end up cutting essential services, they just become privatized.
I think these three ballot initiatives in particular will drive a lot of new voters in November 2026 because they’re all such hot-button issues. The effort to kill the recreational marijuana ballot question will see particularly wide support, and most unions will fight tooth and nail to prevent the state income tax from being reduced, because many of them rely on state funding, either directly or indirectly. I think the same new voters driven to the polls over this will also be inclined to support the rent stabilization petition.
The background of the rent stabilization petition is interesting — even Michelle Wu, an ardent rent control supporter, expressed hesitation about the strict 5% cap on annual increases, and Maura Healey outright took a public stance against it about a year in advance. (I personally think that’s a bit uninspiring, especially when I’m reading elsewhere that some of Mamdani’s first executive actions in New York City are to involve himself in a bankruptcy case against a slumlord.) Regardless, I think the real strategy behind putting the rent stabilization petition on the ballot in its current form was to get the state house to come to the table and craft a better policy (for instance, one that allows local control over rent stabilization, with options for 5-10% annual increments, and which would also allow certain cutouts, like for capital improvements). I don’t know if the state house is actually going to do that, though — so far, their strategy seems to be to let rent stabilization go to the ballot and campaign against it. And that’s very risky (David Cameron tried it in the UK ten years ago) especially since voter turnout with left-leaning voters will probably be very, very high this coming November.
