By Will Dowd, July 27, 2026
Massachusetts voters will need to keep turning the page Nov. 3. Nine statewide questions — enough that most communities expect ballots running two to three pages — ask them to rewrite the rules on government transparency, elections, taxes, conservation, housing, marijuana and guns, tying a modern record set in 1972, 1976 and 1994.
The field locked July 21, when Secretary of the Commonwealth William Francis Galvin’s office set a record-tying nine-question ballot for Nov. 3.
The Elections Division assigned final numbers and, the same day, the State Ballot Law Commission rejected the last pending challenge — a fraud objection to the marijuana repeal’s signatures — finding objectors had not proved enough names invalid.
The nine are what survived a boom. Attorney General Andrea Campbell said residents filed “a record-breaking 47 ballot initiative petitions this year,” and the Legislature enacted none of the certified measures by its May 5 deadline.
MassBudget Reference:
Question 5 would rewrite Chapter 62F, the 1986 cap on state tax collections. Instead of the cap simply compounding off a 40-year-old baseline, it would reset each year to match what the state actually collected the year before, then grow only as fast as wages do. The rewrite would also fold the Fair Share surtax — the 4 percent tax on income above $1 million that lawmakers walled off from the cap in 2023 — into the collections counted against that limit.
The Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center counters that folding in the surtax “erodes the intent” of the 2022 Fair Share vote.
