Often at odds, Mariano and Spilka united by ballot question frustration

 

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Often at odds, Mariano and Spilka united by ballot question frustration   February 26, 2026 By Chris Lisinski

Nothing gets elected officials to set aside their differences quite like a common enemy.

House Speaker Ron Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka, who regularly go through peaks and valleys of cooperation and conflict, came together to lament the growing trend of voters and organizers taking the act of legislating into their own hands.

With the Legislature gearing up to launch its review of 11 questions that could appear on the ballot this fall, Mariano and Spilka on Wednesday aired skepticism about several of the individual measures but reserved their sharpest words for the ballot question process itself. They contended that well-funded interest groups have essentially taken over the constitutionally defined mechanism by which Bay Staters can directly propose and approve laws.

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The whole system is fraught with peril,” Mariano said. “We’re going to look like California with 24, 25 questions on every ballot.”

Appearing alongside Spilka at an event hosted by MASSterList and State House News Service, Mariano lamented the now-routine process of ballot question campaigns using paid firms to gather the tens of thousands of voter signatures necessary to qualify.

“It’s a situation that smacks me as being a little bit too easy for these folks to cherry-pick the issues that are important to them,” Mariano said.

He also referenced allegations that organizers behind a recreational marijuana repeal question misled voters, claims that a state commission ultimately dismissed, and complained that two statewide officeholders, Secretary of State William Galvin and Auditor Diana DiZoglio, are getting in on the act, using the initiative petition process to push favored causes — Election Day voter registration and public records reform, respectively — onto the ballot.

Including a proposed repeal of the state’s 2024 gun law, which is already a lock for the ballot, voters could decide up to a dozen questions this fall, which would set a new record.

Most campaigns are helmed by advocacy groups who are fed up with years of trying and failing to gain traction for an issue among lawmakers. Ballot question campaigns are expensive, but they provide a route to circumvent a hesitant Legislature, and they can give supporters new leverage as they push Beacon Hill to act.

Explaining his decision to pursue a voter registration reform at the ballot box, Galvin in November said he is “convinced the resistance in the Legislature is too great.”

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More Context Boston tax relief response, ballot question reform emerge for Senate action (January 2026)  Cutting taxes, recriminalizing recreational pot, scrutinizing Beacon Hill: record number of ballot questions in the mix for 2026 (November 2025)

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