Massachusetts voters decided on nine ballot questions on Election Day, opting to keep recreational cannabis legal and retain gun control laws.
Berkshire Bureau Chief Josh Landes joined Sam Dingman on Northeast Notebook to discuss how the highly consequential ballot questions played out in Massachusetts.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
Editor's note: This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
Dingman: So, Josh, as of Wednesday morning, the Associated Press had declared outcomes for all of the ballot questions. I believe, except for Questions 5 and 7, is that still the case?
Landes: That is still the case. We heard when I spoke to a town clerk in the Berkshires before the election, he mentioned concerns about these expansive ballots with over two 18-inch cards being hindrance to getting votes counted. I mean, it's almost 4 p.m. on Wednesday, and we're still not 100% done. And in those two particular questions, the margins are very narrow. But I do feel pretty confident about making calls based on how many votes are left to be counted and where things stand right now.
Dingman: Before we get to your beloved Question 7, let's remind folks what Question 5 entails, because this is there's some nuance to this one, unlike the other ballot questions.
Landes: Question 5 is one of these convoluted pieces of careful writing about what this question is all about. It's been pitched as a revenue and spending limit measure that will "change the limit of how much revenue the state can collect in a given year."
It also, if you read other sources explaining what it will do, will increase the likelihood and frequency of refunds from state taxes that have been collected. This is broadly a conservative effort. It's a way to take taxes back from the Commonwealth and redistribute them. In a lot of ways, it's very it's impossible to fully remove this from the context of the Fair Share Amendment, which voters approved in 2024. That is bringing these taxes onto the wealthiest in Massachusetts. It certainly seems like a clawback effort to try to remove some of the burden from some taxpayers that voters have, in fact, themselves overwhelmingly signed off on. It does look like right now, with with a four-point gap between No and Yes, and about 95% of the vote in, it does look like it is not going to pass. And certainly, many of the Democratic politics I spoke to leading up to this, and many of the like left-wing progressive voters' guides were opposed to it. So it looks like it's going to narrowly fail in that four-point margin.
Dingman: As somebody who observes the region, does this outcome that, again, you're just projecting right now, does it surprise you at all how much closer this vote was than the margins on the other questions, which were fairly decisive?
Landes: Briefly, I want to correct myself. The Fair Share Amendment was passed in November 2022.
It looks like right now, basically, we're seeing a lot of urban centers and more progressive parts of Massachusetts, like the Berkshires, overwhelmingly voted against this. The Boston area overwhelmingly voted against this. Most of the coastal enclaves as well. I'm not that surprised. I think there's a lot of people who see things like less taxes, more refunds, etc., and that's nominally attractive. I think it's a devil in the details thing, and I'm not that surprised it was close. I think the way it was phrased in a somewhat difficult to parse manner made it seem more appealing to people. But again, based on the the remaining margins, I do not believe it will pass.
Dingman: Josh, I can hear it in the tone of your voice. You are absolutely itching to give us this update on Question 7. I want to give you the floor before we dive into it. Go ahead.
Landes: so I've been obsessed with question seven for months now. I've been talking about it. I've been reporting on it, and I have to say, I'm going to pat myself on the back. This is the ultimate nail biter. Things right now stand 1.2 percent between No and Yes, with No currently in the lead. Question 7 is fascinating, and I could talk about it for hours. But to make a long story short, this, if passed, would allow the development of single-family homes on lots as small as 5,000 square feet, regardless of zoning ordinances in all 351 municipalities in Massachusetts. It is such a convoluted and fascinating political tale that has seen support from both realtors, the construction industry, private equity, and indeed AI money, which is a whole other chapter of this I haven't even touched on yet.
I genuinely believe I am the most interested person in Question 7 in the world. So yeah, basically there's this sense on one end that okay, if we pass this measure overriding local controls for zoning, it'll be a way to circumvent NIMBYism that is "not in my backyard," for those unfamiliar, and get around this this perceived roadblock to to get more housing into this this market in Massachusetts that desperately needs housing. Now, the other side of that is that nothing about this strategy seems to speak to established research and understandings of the best ways to develop housing, especially affordable housing, creating thousands of new single-family homes certainly is lucrative for the building industry and lucrative for private equity and other groups who could stand to profit from this. But more densely designed multifamily units are less environmentally demanding, more affordable, and more applicable to the needs of the Commonwealth, so that's why it's been sort of caught up in this poll back and forth. But I'm going to make the call right now. With 95% of the votes counted, there's a 30,000 vote margin between No and Yes. I believe Question 7 is going to fail at the ballot box by a very thin margin, but it will fail nonetheless.
