There are five questions on the ballot this Election Day. Three are statewide; some of us in western Massachusetts get to vote on two additional issues. And there is a question that never made it onto the ballot.
The Commonwealth has allowed initiative petitions since 1918; Maine is the only New England state with this particular form of direct democracy. California is notorious for governing by referendum. Prop. 2½ and the ban on bilingual education in public schools both began in California.
This year, the initiative petitions to institute paid family and medical leave, increase the minimum wage, and abolish the sales tax were headed to the ballot until the Legislature was able to negotiate a three-way agreement that satisfied all of the proponents. The minimum wage is going up; the state now has a paid leave requirement and a permanent tax holiday. But not every question was resolved by our elected representatives.
And we won’t get to vote on the Fair Share amendment to the Massachusetts Constitution, also known as the Millionaires Tax.
The Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that it didn’t meet the requirements of the Constitution because the petitions proposed both how to raise and how to spend the funds in a single question. The voters might be confused. And the voters would “(have) no opportunity to modify, amend, or negotiate the sections of a law proposed by popular imitative” as cited in the Fair Share decision. So schools continue to struggle with inadequate funding, and public transportation cannot meet the needs of the community members.
Over the years, we had the opportunity to vote on farm animals, dog racing, gambling and a host of other laws all the way back to 1920 when we voted to define “cider, beer, et. al, as non-intoxicating liquors.” We may not have been confused on that one, just drunk.
While the initiative process can focus attention on an issue, it isn’t a substitute for a functional representative government and the deliberative process of legislating.
The question getting the most attention is Question 1, regulating nurse staffing in hospitals. The text of the question is 652 words long and has a Flesch readability score of 37 (at the college level). The nurses’ union (Committee to Ensure Safe Patient Care), and especially the hospital association (the Coalition to Protect Patient Safety) have spent inordinate amounts of money to sway voters to their side. Of course I don’t want nurses to be over worked and to make bad decisions because there aren’t enough nurses on the floor. And I certainly don’t want to jeopardize the fiscal stability of our community hospitals. This issue deserves thoughtful deliberation. I worry that decisions to vote “yes” or “no” will be made based on fear, or anecdote or personal relationships, instead of on the actual text printed on the ballot.
This is on the ballot and the Fair Share amendment is not? Question 1 is a lot more confusing than taxing millionaires to pay for education and transportation. It is an up and down vote on a very complex question, one that I don’t think should be decided through a referendum. But it’s on the ballot, so I will vote. To paraphrase John McDonough, former director of Health Care for All, my heart is “yes” and my head is “no.” I don’t know yet which will prevail on Election Day.
Question 2 would put Massachusetts on record as opposed to the Citizens United “corporations as people” case and create a commission to research the pernicious effects of big money on our political system and to propose a federal constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United. This problem can’t be solved at the state level, so my “yes” vote is to support this small step on a very long journey.
Question 3 is the result of another attempt to enshrine discrimination, this time against transgender people, in our statutes. Human rights should never be the subject of a referendum. This is another confusing question where voting “no” actually means taking away the rights of transgender people. I will be voting “yes” to affirm transgender rights.
In 1986, 60 percent of Massachusetts voters urged support of a national health care system. This year, advisory Question 4 instructs our representatives to vote for a single-payer health care system on the ballot. I am voting “yes” with a bit more optimism then I had when I voted for it 22 years ago.
Question 5 is about ranked choice voting, a system that allows voters to rank the candidates in the order of preference. The question asks if we want our legislators to introduce a bill that would adopt this system of voting here in the Commonwealth. I think it is worth a try and plan to vote “yes.”
I’m also voting for a new state representative and state senator. My hope for them and for us that they work collaboratively with their colleagues to find common ground, even when the problems are hard and consensus seems impossible.
Clare Higgins, of Northampton, a former mayor of the city, is executive director of the nonprofit Co mmunity Action Pioneer Valley. She can be reached at opinion@gazettenet.com.
Editor’s note: This column has been revised to clarify Clare Higgins’ position on Question 3.