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By Chris Orchard
Early voting ended on Friday, October 30, and by the end of the day about 9,563 people had already cast ballots in Medford — representing 22% of the city’s registered voters.
I wasn’t one of them. That’s because, in these waning hours before Election Day, I’ve been curled up on my couch with a copy of this fall’s buzziest publication: Massachusetts Information for Voters: 2026 Ballot Questions.
Clocking in at 58,392 words, this voter guide is longer than several books I was supposed to read in high school: "Fahrenheit 451," "The Heart of Darkness" and "The Great Gatsby," to name a few.
Across 88 glorious pages, it describes this year’s nine ballot questions, a record-tying amount. The subject matter has been described as “daunting” and “overwhelming.” I prefer to think of it as a real-life Choose Your Own Adventure book, where all of us in line at the liquor store — buying lotto tickets and late-morning nips — get to decide what Massachusetts should do about assault-style firearms.
Facetiousness aside, the ballot-question rigmarole we go through every two years is frustrating, yet it also feels indispensable.
Making an informed choice is frustration number one, and a cottage industry has sprouted up to help voters figure things out. Almost every media outlet in the state — including Gotta Know Medford — has their own ballot-question guide. At local Tufts University, the Center for State Policy Analysis created the MyBallot app, and six Tufts researchers analyzed this year’s questions and wrote useful reports. It’s a genuinely valuable resource — and another 65 pages of reading.
Be honest: How many of you are delving into the complex fiscal implications of modifying state revenue limits, as outlined in this year’s Question 5, versus choosing whatever your neighbor’s yard sign says? Have you even seen a yard sign related to Question 5?
Which brings up frustration number two: “Should I be making this decision — as in me?”
Remember the Right to Repair question from 2020, where we were asked to make a decision about motor vehicle mechanical data?
Supporters said independent mechanics — not just expensive dealerships — should have access to cars’ computer data. Opponents said the technology required to make that happen would allow the Deep State to hack into your car and launch you off the Zakim Bridge into the river.
I can’t change my own oil, and now you’re asking me about “telematics systems” and “open access data platforms”? Can someone more qualified make this decision for me? Perhaps a legislative body with committees, hearings, research capacity and access to expert testimony?
In the end, 71% of voters supported the idea that local mechanics should be able to fix cars. The will of the people was heard loud and clear and resulted in: five years of lawsuits.
Cue frustration number three: We the People make a democratic decision, and then relevant powers choose whether or not to ignore us. As the Boston Globe explained, “The Legislature has the power to alter any law that passes at the ballot box, meaning it could tweak, or even overturn, the measure should it choose.”
So what’s the [bleeping] point?
This year’s Question 1 is a good example. It would “make most records held by the Legislature and the Office of the Governor public records under the Massachusetts Public Records Law,” according to the voter guide.
Sound familiar? That’s because it’s the sequel to Question 1 from 2024, where Massachusetts voters, by a 40-point margin, said the state auditor could audit the legislature. The legislature balked, the state auditor sued, the attorney general and Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court got involved, and to make a long story short, here we are again.
There’s already speculation about lawsuits if — or probably when — the question passes.
Another example: In 2000, voters supported a ballot question to lower the income tax to 5%, but elected officials only lowered it to 5.3%.
Massachusetts has been accused of having one of the “least efficient” and “least open” legislatures in the country. William Galvin, secretary of the commonwealth, explained that every ballot question goes to the legislature first. If you’re voting on a ballot question, it’s because “the legislature has failed to act on these things,” he said.
But look what happens when the legislature does pass something significant, such as the 2024 firearms law. It received overwhelming support in the state House and Senate. Question 9 asks if we want to repeal it — or, actually, if we approve it. Yes means no, don’t repeal it, and no means yes, do repeal it. Is that clear?
We’re also being asked to prohibit something we only just legalized 10 years ago: recreational marijuana. Since then, marijuana sales have become a $10 billion industry, generating $2 billion in tax revenue. Polling suggests around 61% of voters will vote “no” on the prohibition — meaning “yes,” marijuana sales would remain legal.
Regardless of where you stand on this issue, perhaps you can agree it’s annoying to be asked a question you just answered.
Perhaps a system where the legislature ignores the people, the people ignore the legislature, and everyone ignores themselves from previous elections — where decisions can have widespread unintended consequences or no consequences at all — is worthy, at the very least, of complaining about.
And yet: What better peaceful mechanism do we have to assert the idea, found in our state constitution, that “the people have a right to alter the government, and to take measures necessary for their safety, prosperity and happiness”?
Like me, you’ve probably been on the winning and losing side of various ballot questions. No matter our individual opinions, perhaps we can insist together that our time not be wasted.
When the people make a decision, that should be the end of the debate. Anyone who disagrees should be voted out of office.
Chris Orchard is a Medford resident who has spent more than two decades in nonprofit communications and local journalism — and nearly five decades in muttering to himself. He has a master’s degree in media and communications from City St George’s, University of London, and is the former editor of Patch.com’s Somerville news website. His writing has appeared in an array of publications, from national websites to neighborhood newspapers.
