It’s a bit rich to hear Massachusetts House Speaker Ron Mariano complain about the large number of ballot questions being proposed this year, since it is the Legislature’s own sluggish and opaque habits that have prompted frustrated citizens to seek a more direct route to getting laws passed.
“The whole system is fraught with peril,” Mariano said back in February, when a record number of initiative petitions were teed up for voter approval in November (some have since been disqualified). It’s the Legislature’s prerogative, he said, to deliberate issues through “many, many iterations.”
If not for the initiative petition process, Massachusetts probably wouldn’t have the millionaires surtax, or legalized recreational marijuana, or more humane treatment of farm animals. Initiative petitions also tend to increase voter participation. But Mariano is right that a ballot question is a blunt instrument for deciding complex policy decisions, and one that is too often dominated by deep-pocketed special interests.
Legislation passed in both the House and Senate earlier this year — yet to be sent to the governor’s office — would require more frequent reporting of the money donated to ballot campaigns, aligning them with the schedule for regular candidates for office. It’s an obvious improvement in transparency.
Still, the most vexing part of the ballot process today is the proliferation of paid signature gatherers, which corrupts the spirit of the 1917 progressive-era measure that created citizen initiatives in the first place. The idea was to offer a direct outlet when genuine public support for a policy change was blocked by elected representatives. Now whole industries have sprung up to do the civic work of demonstrating support for public issues — for a price. In 2024, one analysis found the five ballot question committees in Massachusetts spent $6.4 million on signature gathering alone, which comes out to an average of $14.80 per signature.
“It’s not being used as it was intended,” Democratic Senator Barry Finegold of Andover said in an interview. “Buying access to the ballot … the system doesn’t feel right.” Finegold wrote language in the Senate version of the bill (also adopted by the House) that would prohibit paying collectors by the signature, or “other incentive payments tied to the number of signatures collected.”
Such restrictions may run up against the 2010 US Supreme Court finding in Citizens United that money equals speech, and even the Massachusetts Constitution is exceptionally protective of political speech. But several states — including Oregon, Ohio, and Florida — do prohibit the practice of paying by the signature. And Finegold emphasizes that the bill doesn’t ban any payments to signature collectors or companies, who tend to cram in as many signatures as possible, tempting gatherers to cut corners.
Proponents could argue that the restriction is an anti-fraud measure. At a minimum, signature solicitors should be required to disclose that they are paid operatives, not simply earnest volunteers with a cause.
It isn’t just ballot committees that contend with paying for signatures. Earlier this month, two Republican candidates for state Constitutional offices were denied spots on the September primary ballot when a state commission determined that signatures on their nomination papers were likely forged.
Globe reporter Chris Van Buskirk found about a dozen voters whose names appeared on petitions for Anne Manning Martin and Michael Walsh — Republican candidates for lieutenant governor and attorney general, respectively — who claimed never to have signed the papers. The candidates blame the firm they paid to gather signatures for them and have appealed the ruling.
One person interviewed in Van Buskirk’s story summed up the feelings of too many voters who have come to doubt the legitimacy of elections. “Unfortunately, I don’t trust anybody anymore,” said Andrew Tamburello, a Florida resident whose name appeared without authorization on nomination papers for Manning Martin. “It stinks.”
Undermining confidence in elections is exactly the cynical goal the Trump administration is pursuing. For years Trump and his enablers have been sowing doubts about election integrity, relentlessly claiming rigged votes everywhere from California to Virginia without a shred of credible evidence, and as recently as this month unleashing FBI agents to “investigate” the 2020 election in Georgia.
A new national poll finds public trust declining steeply even in state and local elections, with voters citing concerns about access and intimidation at the polls as well as AI-generated misinformation about the elections. The slow erosion of faith in fair elections is grooming the American people to believe it the next time Trump or his allies say Republican losses are fake.
Voting remains the best way for Americans to check these authoritarian impulses. More transparency — and less cash — will help keep confidence up, and citizens engaged.
Renée Loth is a contributing Globe Opinion writer.