BOSTON — As lawmakers weigh reforms to the ballot question process, the state’s top election official called it a “safety valve for democracy,” and said “you might change some of the procedures, but you shouldn’t change the concept.”
The House passed a bill in July to expand disclosure rules for ballot question campaigns and impose new requirements around paid signature gathering. That version was an expansion of a bill the Senate passed in January to require more public reporting on ballot question fundraising and spending.
The House bill calls for a special legislative commission to review the entire initiative petition process as laid out in the Massachusetts Constitution, with an end-of-2027 deadline to recommend statutory and constitutional amendments to change the process. The bills picked up momentum as lawmakers have grown frustrated with the process that allows citizens to get around the Legislature to make new laws.
They are now in House-Senate negotiations, and lawmakers could produce a compromise before the end of the year that changes how initiative petitions get on the ballot. Now, other voices are also starting to weigh in, amid a particularly active election cycle for citizen-led petitions.
There are nine questions going before voters in November — a tie for the most in state history. Secretary of State William Galvin, the state’s top election official, said they stand out even more this year for how diverse and complex the measures are.
Asked Tuesday if he worried voters might stop voting before getting to the end of their lengthy ballot in November, Galvin said, “I hope that doesn’t happen.”
“People have an opportunity here. However it came about, because of legislative inactivity, whatever it is, nevertheless, I think it’s important that people have the opportunity to understand these questions,” he said.
“This process of citizen lawmaking is really something … that emerged from the so-called reform effort of the last century, and it was a national effort that basically said, yes, it’s great to give the Legislature authority, but there was a distrust of the Legislature, and they wanted to make sure that people retain that authority,” Galvin added.
Used to controlling the lawmaking process, legislators have expressed discontent with the number and content of ballot questions this year.
House Speaker Ron Mariano said this summer that the Legislature’s efforts to change the process are a response “to widespread concerns.”
“Over 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,” Mariano said. “Oftentimes, the opposition is equally well-resourced, which has led to high-stakes litigation and, in some cases, judicial removal of questions from the ballot.”
Galvin said Tuesday that the process is “meant to empower the people. It’s meant as an alternative to legislative action when there either has been none or it’s not popular.”
“So it gives people that safety valve for democracy,” he said. “There’s been discussion about, is it something we should change? Well, maybe you might change some of the procedures, but you shouldn’t change the concept, and you require a constitutional amendment to change the concept. I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
The Pioneer Institute released a study last week that recommended a different set of reforms to the ballot initiative process.
The conservative think tank was one of the main sponsors this year of a measure to cut income taxes, which the Supreme Judicial Court knocked off the ballot after it found Attorney General Andrea Campbell wrote a summary of the measure that was “significantly misleading and likely to influence voters.”
“In 2026, the SJC ultimately struck down three petitions, which if passed would have reinstated rent control, reformed stipend allocations in the Massachusetts Legislature, and reduced the income tax rate,” the Pioneer Institute wrote in its report.
It continued, “Combined, these campaigns raised more than $2.7 million and spent at least $1.6 million in 2025 alone. The SJC deemed the rent control and stipend reform petition language unconstitutional. The income tax cut measure was thrown off the ballot not because of a flaw with the petition itself, but because the SJC deemed the Attorney General’s summary misleading after it had already been presented to voters during the signature gathering process.”
The report said lawmakers’ proposed reforms would not fix issues with the process, but instead “severely restrict it,” by “increasing geographic signature requirements, increasing campaign finance disclosures, restricting paid signature collection, raising vote thresholds for certain ballot items, and expanding the Legislature’s ability to override voter-approved measures.”
The Pioneer Institute recommends, instead, earlier judicial review for all of the questions, as well as a lengthened period available for signature collection.
“In cases where the petition’s flaws are truly the fault of proponents, an earlier rejection may be a more fair and efficient outcome,” it says. “In cases where the petition summary is at fault, earlier judicial review of the petition would also make it easier to justify amending the summary language rather than keeping the measure off the ballot.”
For the first round of signature collection — the highest threshold a measure faces — campaigns have 64 days to collect signatures equal to 3% of votes cast for governor in the most recent gubernatorial election.
“Giving campaigns more time would reduce the incentive to hire outside signature-gathering firms and allow campaigns greater opportunity to collect signatures through their own supporters while preserving existing signature requirements and safeguards,” the report says.
Since Massachusetts adopted the initiative and referendum process in 1917, it said, voters have considered 231 statewide ballot measures and approved nearly 70% of them.