Get ready for a long ballot.
The following article appeared originally in CommonWealth Beacon on Sept. 15, 2026. It is reposted here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The Massachusetts House, Senate, and governor are responsible for the vast majority of what becomes law in the Commonwealth, but they’re not the only ones with that power. Individuals can also propose changes to state law or the state Constitution, and if supporters manage to navigate a thicket of procedural hurdles and win support from a majority of voters, their measure becomes law, just the same as anything that followed the more traditional path through Beacon Hill…