Ballot Q Results

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Today, we will be discussing the five ballot questions that appeared on the state ballot across Massachusetts. We’ll break down the results—covering the three that passed and the two that failed—and dive into the details, outcomes, and key takeaways from each. Tune in for everything you need to know about how these measures played out and what they mean going forward.

This is the audio version of the Incorruptible Mass podcast, season 5 episode 65. You can watch the video version on our YouTube channel.

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to Incorruptible Mass. We are here to help us all transform state politics because we know that we could have a state legislature that truly represents the needs of the vast majority of the people in our beautiful state. Today we will be talking about the ballot questions that were on the state ballot all over Massachusetts. There were five. 
And we're going to be talking about the five of those, three of them that won and two of them that lost. So we will cover all of those and you know, the internals and everything you need to know about them. And before we do I am going to have my co hosts introduce themselves and I will start with Jordan.
Jordan Berg Powers. He him and I have many years experience working on issues including ballot initiatives in Massachusetts, having designed some of the campaigns. So I'm excited to talk about it.
Jonathan. Jonathan Cohn he him his joining from Boston typically in the south end. I'm now walking through Dorchester right back.
I've been working in well I've been active on a number of issue and electoral campaigns for over a decade now, including some of the ballot questions this year. Looking forward to talking. 
And I am Anna Callahan. She her coming at you from Medford where I am a city councilor. Done a lot of work at the kind of local level nationally as well as some state politics stuff. So let's go ahead and jump in. First let's talk about one of the ones I was most excited about which is the one around the auditor being able to audit the state legislature.
I'm so excited that this one passed. It passed 72 to 28. Yeah.
So that's amazing. Who wants to jump in and get a background super quickly? 
This isn't background but in the past and all but one of the cities and towns across the state, I believe that that's correct. Yeah.
Like the like one small like central conservative, central math town where it like lost my one vote or something. Yeah, I'll find that. I'll find that out.
But I think that's exactly correct. Yeah it passed. I just.
It passed so 70 it it got 2.2 million votes and the no got less than a million votes. So just like it's not even, it's not even close.
I think the thing that's that's important for folks to know about it is that it's already had an effect actually I will say much to my surprise like I want to say very clearly that I did not think it would that they would move this quickly and so they have the ballot initiative that calls for an independent auditor to come in appointed by the auditor's office. And the legislature has said that they will allow that so no longer there themselves to do it. Somebody else outside is going to do the books to get a sense of how they're spending their money, which is a big deal.
And so that's already something that's a. That they've agreed to. To move.
I think the other piece, much to the credit of Jonathan Cohn who's on here, he very smartly worked with Mass Fiscal alliance on a letter that I'm hearing already has gotten a lot. Oh, no, that was act on Mass. That wasn't me.
Oh, Act. Act on Mass. Sorry.
Act on Mass. Sorry, I got it wrong. But act on Mass And Mass Fiscal work together on a letter that's already getting talked about in the state House about not messing with it.
So they were going to move quickly to invalidate it, I was told, and now they're thinking about like trying to figure it out. So I think both are, you know, like, I think I'm not confident that we'll get a real sense of what's happening in the legislature, but I do think it's part of a long conversation that we should be having that we should be happening about. About.
Yeah, about the. About sort of the legislature and how bad it is. The essence of this podcast.
The essence of this podcast and I will also say that we, if you weren't around for it, please catch up on one of my absolute favorite ones of when the state legislature just broke the law to subvert democracy. I think all three of us have been a little, a little hesitant to believe that even if this passes, that the legislature will allow the auditor to come in and do what they are supposed to be doing. So we'll see, right? It.
It's good. There's some indications that maybe this might or parts of it might actually happen. And we'll try and keep up on this topic and see, you know, as things move along and let you guys know if the legislature is allowing it or if they're, you know, trying to buck the system.
And I'll tag in as well to note that one thing that I think that the large performance of question one indicates is that legislators will often like to say that their constituents actually don't care about transparency. Their constituents care about all of these other things. And what I what question one, the overwhelming performance in all parts of state says one, no, actually your constituents do care about this.
And also two, you actually aren't legislating on those things. That you say that your constituents care about. So, like, you're doing neither of those things.
Why don't you do both instead? Yep, absolutely. I just want to say, I want to say really quickly one more thing about it really quickly. So as you know, as people know who listen to this podcast, I think there's a lot of hacks that talk about politics in Massachusetts.
One of them is the worst purveyors of this is the center for State Policy Analysis at Tufts University that pretends to do research, but does in fact, no research and is just opinion of one person, Evan Horowitz. He was on CBS News locally to talk about it. He said that the yes vote is not a vote for this power, but a vote for gridlock, which is both nonsense because it would literally would not cause gridlock because you can't.
There's no, there's no grid to lock about this. Like, there's no, there's currently nothing happening. And so it wouldn't.
It's not like a bill that gets passed and won't get passed on either side. It's just like, that's not how gridlock works. So it's also nonsense that got put on the air, but also just important that, like, it's not about just this one thing.
Like, do I think everything that's in the, in the ballot initiative is going to happen? No, it's about the continued pressure that we need to have because not one thing will fix the legislature, but all of the pressure you do, people listening do to constantly say the way this state works is not working for us. It is not working for regular people. And every time we notch another link on that, that does create change.
And we've already seen movement on it. They're on the defensive about this issue. And it's on us to continue that pressure.
But it's also, again, just another thing about the nonsense that gets put on, on the, on the air, gets put into the rate, into the radio and gets put into print because it has the allure of truthiness, as Colbert says. It has the allure of being both sides with. With while continuing to be bullshit, which is.
And it's just frustrating. Oh, man, I gotta reply about this gridlock because, like, when you think of political gridlock, what you think of is the Republicans and the Democrats. Yeah.
Cannot get anything done because they're 50. 50. So what he's saying essentially is that our 90% democratic state legislature is going to have some.
Two factions, right. That don't completely agree with each other. And I think what he means is that we might have some semblance of democracy instead of a monarchy, which is what you have when there is only one opinion.
I mean it is a whole like just cracks me up. It's hilariously stupid. It's hilariously stupid.
It's also just kind of confusing because even if you're like, if I'm trying to think of like a charitable interpretation, it's like, oh, this is just going to lead to a lawsuit between where they sue. Like one they could just agree to it. And like if they waste their money in a lawsuit, it's not like they're not, it's not like that's preventing them from doing stuff.
If the legislature decides to sue, they can like walk and chew gum at the same time. There are 160 of them in one chamber and 40 of them another. And none of them are the attorney for a lawsuit if they sue.
So I don't see how that even like there's just no foundation on which that that argument even makes sense. Ridiculous. Wait, it gets worse after this.
Let's go to question two. Question two. Okay, great.
So this is about the mcas high stakes testing and only saying that not removing the MCAs but simply saying that it will not be used as a requirement for graduation. That like if you pass everything else but you simply don't pass the MCAS because of language things or some other reason that you can still graduate. And that passed 59 to 41.
Woo. One thing easily, one thing I'm super curious about and Jordan, I don't know if you've seen any analysis of season this type yet is my impression has been that the results will look rather similar to the question 2 results in 2016. Around question 2 then progressive position was a no because 2016 question 2 also on education was about expanding charter schools.
No. Like I was. I've been very curious about to what extent that the results will map onto each other.
Particularly because of one of the biggest differences is like in question 2016 the biggest supporters of question two were the rich districts that don't have charter schools and were never have charter schools because they have a lot of very well resourced public schools and just think that they're helping everyone else by privatizing their schools. And a similar way in which that the big a lot of the basis very strong like no votes on 2016. No, no votes on question two this year were the richest parts of the state.
So this is a good question. So the answer is that it is almost the same number although more People oppose the charter school expansion. At least again these, the final numbers will change.
So just to be clear, the state goes through an audit process. It goes through a process of finalizing numbers. We are not, we have not finalized these numbers.
So they will change somewhat from official to where we got on now reporting. But currently it's about 1.9 million people voted for question two and 2.2 million people vote. I mean sorry, 2 million people. So about a hundred thousand people less voted for to get rid of this as did the place.
Again, I don't know all the places that voted. I can't find a good map of the question to this time around. Like where it sort of.
Yeah, so I think I'll get back to me about that question. But I think yes, I think there's sort of a good question about the MCAS ending and I think or sort of ending the, the sort of requirement for graduation.
So again, Evan Horowitz assessment of this is that the problem with it is that it'll get rid of standards. Again, this is again this problem when you have one side that has a fact based analysis that is actually relatively moderate in the other side which is an extremist position, extremist right wing position that's not based on fact but based on vibes. And so then when you have this allure of truthiness, this thing in the middle, the thing in the middle is nonsense, stupidity.
And so one of the arguments that was on TV that got parroted by people who are quote unquote centrist is this will get rid of standards. The state has standards. It does not in fact remotely change standards.
It's like there'll be 300 standards for graduation. No, in fact there is still one standard for graduation in Massachusetts. It is actually a well documented standard process that went through teachers and people who are experts to try to figure out what the standard.
The problem is that the MCAS does not align to that standard. The MCAS is totally against the standard. It's not.
It sits by itself in stupid land. That has no bearing on the standards. The standards are actually good.
They are done by experts. Those still exist. Teachers are still bound by standards.
That's literal nonsense that right wing billionaires put on tv. And this quote unquote expert that apparently is at Tufts literally parroted odd CBS news. And thankfully voters knew better.
Because the problem, I'll just say really quickly the end. Jonathan, you should go. Is the problem that the corporations have is that people my age and younger have all taken the stupid test.
And we all know it's fucking stupid. So you can't lie to us about it. The thing that I was going to say is that there's like the general confusion between what is the standard and what is the measurement goal.
The MCAS is the state's. The use of a high stakes standardized test is the measurement tool that the state uses for that. That's not the underlying standard.
A test is not a standard. That's a basic definitional thing. They always kept getting confused by the opposition, considering, as you know, we still as a state have standards for what you should be learning in different grades.
And I feel like one of the things that just always seems so corrupt thinking question two is whether you believe that teachers want to teach their students. Because so many of the opponents of question two operate on the basis that teachers in fact do not want to teach and only for a cudgel. That's not even against the teacher, it's against the student.
Will you get teacher to teach and student to learn when in fact if you're making things about a high stakes test, it makes the teaching process and the learning process less enjoyable and less enriching and actually makes like leaves everybody worse off? Yep. Well, we're super happy that this one passed. 
Let's talk about the third question, which was about Uber and Lyft drivers being able to unionize.
And if I can give just the tiniest bit of background that people listening to this probably already know. But Uber, Lyft have been putting ballot questions on a number of states where they are basically trying to make it so that they cannot unionize, so they are considered just contractors. And so this is like in a larger battle between the drivers and Uber and Lyft companies.
And. Yes. Oh, go ahead, Jonathan, you first.
Okay, sorry, it took me way too long to unmute there. So this one exists in the context of how Uber and Lyft, who had back two years ago, tried to do a ballot question to kind of enshrine into law the misclassification of employees as independent contractors were again going to do so this cycle. They ended up not going forward with that after the Attorney general kind of settled with them on an ongoing lawsuit on that, that increased benefits for their workers while allowing them to continue to misclassify.
And then with question three, that was some. The SEIU, 30GBJ and the machinists who kind of, I guess that they're orthogonally to the issue of misclassification, wanted to make it so that the work so that the drivers could form a union. Because if you're an independent contractor and not an employee.
You cannot form a union because that you face kind of. That's. What was that.
What am I blanking out of the formal legal term that you have to. There's that kind of collusion or that's not. I don't think that's the correct word that I'm trying to think of.
But that you can't do that. That's illegal. And you have to basically have to rewrite the law.
You want them to be able to kind of organize and collectively bargain. But Jordan, since you were tagging. Yeah.
Just, just, just to say the same thing you did which is just, I think it's, it's really tough because of all the things you said right. Like on one side of it because Andrea Campbell is a terrible attorney general who sold out workers. You were left in this situation where the unions either had to not before the ability of these workers to get unionized because they rightly are upset about this new classification.
But she's never going to take on corporations. She's bought and paid for by corporations. So I think the right the union being like look, we already have a bad situation.
The law is never going to be applied to these workers. We gotta carve out this special place and allow them to unionize. That's a pragmatic answer.
It might be short sighted. I think we don't know. It's sort of an unknown I think think to know.
But I do think that like it is in, in the. The reason I think I was. Yes.
And I think everybody else is like in the scenario where this is the reality we live in, it's better to have these workers unionized and have the right to collectivize if they so choose. And then to worry about how do we actually take on the underlining issue which is that corporations continue to be called innovative when really they're just breaking the law and hurting workers and the people in power are refusing to just apply the law to rich people on our behalf. Well we passed it.
Right. We did that. So that's good.
May not be perfect, but step in the right direction. We can go on to four and five. Short story: sadly, they did not pass.
So four was legalized psychedelic drugs. And I don't have the numbers on that. That did not pass.
Anybody want to jump in with commentary about that? About that one? Yeah, I was really surprised that four. They thought they were going to win and I thought that they were going to win. It was not close.
They lost by 57% to 40%. You know, I don't have a good sense beyond just sort of the general. Like, Massachusetts is a little bit more conservative, people think a little bit older.
And it sounds bonkers to allow psychedelic drugs, even though there's a lot of good science behind the ability to use it for people who need it. And it's really sad because, like, also continuing to ban this sort of scientific approach to treating people's medical needs and to create arbitrary barriers where we're allowing, like alcohol and other substances but not these substances because of just arbitrary things is really. I don't know, it's sad to me.
I think there was an opportunity to make people's lives easier and better that we miss. Missed out on. But it was surprising to me that it did so poorly.
I. So I was a. Yes.
But I was getting concerned that it wasn't going to pass from hearing people in like, general liberal left circles being. No. In the final weeks.
And the things that I was hearing from people was where people being like, kind of concerned about like, the home grow portion of it, which what I explained to people is that, like, people acted as though the fact that it had this like, limited legalization of kind of. Kind of possession and like, kind of homegrown. I'm sorry, I know there are people who do psychedelic drugs these days.
Like, currently they get them somehow so that, like, it's not like that somehow not already existing. And which I thought was kind of like a basically the type of oppositional way that like, opposition leans into things that get people, like, down a rabbit hole that isn't even fully aligned with reality. And the other.
I know that there was a segment of the psychedelics community who instead of that were like the very intense home grow people who were opposed to question four because they wanted unlimited home grown, which to me it's like, that's not gonna happen anytime soon, my friend. So, like, this is a step forward and you should take it. You can't please everybody.
Yeah. Should we just go ahead and cover? Quickly, Cover question five, which I was pretty sad about. It's raising the minimum wage for tipped workers, which is just such a crime that they're allowed to be paid less than the minimum wage and how much it affects their inability to push back against sexual harassment and all those things.
Really? Yeah. I want to. I want to go.
I want to go into the history of it again, because I want to remind people that opposition to it which came out comes fundamentally from the racist structures that we have in place and the way that we continue to replicate them. Over and over and over again, despite people who think of themselves as people of goodwill, but then replicate those systems of systematic racism and oppression. So just as a reminder, the minimum wage was created by fdr.
There was a carve out for the industries that were largely done by black people. Those were farming and hospitality. And so that is the foundation of why there is a sub minimum wage.
It is discrimination against black people. As women and other and other people of color moved into. As other people of color moved into farming and women moved into hospitality, those continued because our society functionally does not think that they are, that they should be paid equally to other people.
And so that persisted for a long time. And so this bill was met, passed in eight states and the District of Columbia. There were concerns about lost wages due to lost tipping.
There was concerns about like the pooling of wages and some other concerns. Those were easily allayed by information about what happened in other states. So again, there's just bad information out in the world.
You know, Evan Horowitz, again, our research suggests that other places have these laws require cover to make a little bit more. Yes, that's right. Actually there's a lot of research that says that that's actually what happens, that none of the concerns that people had actually happened.
I wish we lived in a system where there was an independent body that actually talks about policy and whether or not it works or does it, but we don't have that system. So instead people were left to talk to people about their fears. And not to say that those fears weren't real, but rather that they had answers that people that, that unfortunately never made it to the public.
And the campaign was not very well run. It was pretty good. Unfortunate because in that case it was such a heavily heavy imbalance when it came to spending on the campaign with a no side heavily outspent.
Yes. So that. And so that anybody who goes out to eat would end up being seeing constant vote no on five, vote no on five, vote no on 5.
And considering the fact that there wasn't to the degree necessary of organizing of the servers themselves by the yes side, which needed to have happened a while ago to begin with, a lot of servers would just hear the fear mongering from their bosses about how they're going to lose out on tips or how the restaurant will go under. And so then a number of people, if they would ask their friends who work in the industry, a number of them would say no. And then people with people who view themselves as like kind of good liberals would then end up Voting no despite it being like totally contradictory to their underlying values.
I'll just say the other yes. Oh, sorry. Do you want to say anything else, Anna, about that? Okay, I want to go back to question two because Jonathan had a question about the towns that voted for and Jonathan's suspicions are correct.
The places that voted to keep the MCAs are all the leafy suburbs who also voted to end the charter school. So the towns that sort of. Towns that wanted to.
That sort of think of themselves as places that want to have sort of policies that affect black and brown people but not their own communities, I. E. Charter schools, they are also the places that wanted to keep the MCAs as a graduation requirement, even though they are places that it does not affect them and the same level it affects and the places that have students who are harmed by the MCAs.
Because again, what is the MCAs? It is a system to figure out where rich people stay. So who wants to keep it in place? The rich people. The rich people voted to keep it in place.
And who are the people who wanted to get rid of it? The black brown people who it literally discriminates against and the low income folks who it literally discriminates against. We're like, we need to get rid of this system of tying our students futures to this arbitrary, to this arbitrary test, which again is not our standard. It does not map on to the standards you need to graduate.
And so it is nice when you come home and your kid gets this grade and they're shown to be like, you know, 85th percentile or whatever. I'm sure it makes those parents like feel feel nice. And that's, you know, I have to say that this year my MCAS grade, my daughter's MCAT grade did make me feel the proudest I've ever felt of my daughter because she told us during that, during the beginning of the mcast week that she didn't, she started to take it, didn't like it and decided to leave.
And I've never been prouder that her said zero did not complete. That is in fact true because we do not force our child to not take it. We did not force her to take it.
And she, we were like, do whatever you want. And she was like, peace out on that. Ah, right on.
She's already a rabble rouser. Anybody have any final thoughts on any of these ballot questions? My final thought is ballot initiatives are really hard. People think of them as just, they actually require a lot of money, but ultimately they, and so that is a critique against them.
That I hear, but they are still a better way to legislate than our current process. And also, you know, there's a lot of attempts by people who are controlled by or totally in line with the rich ruling class to get rid of this progressive change that was made in the progressive error to allow citizens to have a direct say on their lives. And we should, we should fight that with every ember, even when results don't go our way.
Yes, people can spend a lot of money and get results that might be counter to my belief systems, but that's better than the current system where a few people get a say and money controls that system, you know, like they already control that system. I'd rather have people at least have a chance to have a say over their lives. And it's funny, I feel like we have something in common with some of those red states that voted, you know, for to increase the minimum wage, or they voted, you know, to protect abortion rights, or they voted to have paid family and sick leave and they voted for Trump.
Like, they, they clearly do not see the electoral process as one where they can get policy passed. So they put them on the ballot. And that's, you know, we have, sadly, we have that in common with them that we cannot get this stuff through our 90% democratic legislature.
So we got to put it on the ballot and vote for it. Wonderful. Jonathan, final thoughts? Yeah, I was going to say that they are a valuable resource against legislative inaction as well as the bargaining tool to influence to try to get legislative action.
So people should always go into them with clear eyes, but that they're still a very useful tool to be able to wield. Fantastic. Wonderful.
Thank you so much. Thanks to all our listeners. You can always donate below to help keep our podcast alive.
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