Jon Chesto of the Boston Globe just posted a remarkable piece on the ballot question process in Massachusetts, Norfolk DA probing signature fraud on business-backed Uber/Lyft referendum. It helps illustrate how the ballot measure process, trumpeted as a means for the citizens to pass policy over the objections of the legislature, has become a plaything of corporations. (And another black mark for Uber/Lyft, which has existing problems with campaign finance as I show in Understanding how ‘dark money’ perverts politics).
This is the exact theme Professor Jerold Duquette and I strike in our chapter on ballot questions in the forthcoming book The Politics of Massachusetts Exceptionalism: Perception Meets Reality. Drawing on a 2002 CommonwealthMagazine piece by John McDonough, “Taking the Laws into Their Own Hands: The Bay State’s Referendum Process Lets Voters Take Control…Sometimes” we agree with Professor McDonough, giving the ballot process two cheers out of three to that time. Since then though, the corporations have taken over and the worst of it has come since the Citizens United decision.
A big part of the corporate advantage is the signature gathering process. From Mr. Chesto’s reporting:
Getting the signatures to make the ballot is an arduous, grinding, and difficult task. For citizens, it takes a passionate volunteer base who really care about the issue. For corporations and the wealthy, who generally have no public support for their causes, it involves unraveling a few hundred thousand off the bank roll to hire professional signature gatherers. And Uber and Lyft just found out that hired guns who don’t actually care about the issue can cause problems.
Uh, no. You know who managed it, as we show in the book? Geoff Diehl, that’s who, in 2014 with The Committee to Tank the Automatic Gas Tax Hikes.
The Keep Massachusetts Safe Committee, which sought a vote in opposition to Massachusetts law protecting transgender rights in 2018, spent only $3,800 to gather signatures. It was badly outspent and out organized during the fall campaign, and transgender rights gained the support of 68 percent of voters.
But no question, the corporations have a huge advantage and the regular citizens are left in the dust because of paid for signature gathering. That’s what we found in studying successful and failed ballot committees from 2008 through 2020. As Professor Duquette and I write in our chapter, “The lesson here is that getting onto the ballot is now largely a tool for well-resourced interests, and not to uphold some ideal of an engaged citizenry rising up against elites.”
I found the same thing when writing my book Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization. The Walton and Boston oligarchs backed Families for Excellent Schools and Great Schools Massachusetts ballot committee paid for signatures, $414,000, while letting on that there was a groundswell of parents chafing for more charter schools.
It would be better for corporations and oligarchs if this was all kept hidden from us, and they work hard to hide it. As I show in Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization prominently used images of women and children of color in their advertising. But when the Office of Campaign and Political Finance ordered disclosure, it was revealed that the hidden funders were wealthy and white, and the decision makers and high-level staff were white professionals. Great Schools Massachusetts spent almost $22 million, but only $317,000 went directly to women and/or minority-owned firms. Keri Rodrigues, Families for Excellent Schools Inc. state director, organizer, and spokesperson told CommonWealth Magazine that women and people of color were used in the campaign as “props.” Ms. Rodrigues has since gone from Walton-funded Families for Excellent Schools to a lucrative career with succeeding Walton-funded privatization groups including Massachusetts Parents United and National Parents Union.
Money never sleeps. Follow the Money.
Maurice T. Cunningham is author of Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization.
