Vote NO on Question 3
By Jordan Berg Powers | Consultant
“Hopefully, all of us who are saying No on 3 can be your guide to join us in saying No on 3 as well.”
Private Equity Executives are trying to buy a more favorable election system and are making promises they never intend to keep. This should sound familiar: billionaires make all sorts of promises to get the system they want, and once they rig the system in their favor, it becomes nearly impossible to undo. That is what is before us on Question 3 if the billionaires get their way.
The debate over Question 3 raises real questions about representation and political power in Massachusetts. Massachusetts community activists, grassroots leaders, labor unions, and advocates who wake up every day trying to make our state better have come together to oppose Ballot Question 3. Why?
The Yes on 3 campaign has raised about $5.6 million, with just 15 donors supplying over $4.09 million. Executives from two of the larger private equity firms, Bain Capital and Berkshire Partners, account for over 62 cents of every dollar. In total, 22 private-equity executives gave $3.88 million. The Yes side of Question 3 has raised more than Smith and Wesson has given to rewrite our gun laws through Question 9, more than the alcohol industry and cannabis industry are spending combined opposing and supporting the Cannabis repeal question, more than all of the other questions you will be voting on this year.
The overwhelming majority of this campaign's funding comes from obscenely wealthy individuals who have given extensively in other campaigns to advance their views and candidates, such as the Charter School Reform movement, or corporate-friendly politicians who are more palatable to their business goals.
This isn’t a grassroots movement. It’s a hedge fund with a ballot question.
When I was a kid, I always sat with rapt attention at the edge of the kitchen, trying to hear the work and debates of my Grandparents, Uncles and Aunts (some actually related, most just with the title of family without actually being blood relatives), and a long line of community organizers who, like my grandparents and parents were Civil Rights activists and organizers.
My grandfather, Ted Childs, was the first Black trainer in the NFL, fought to desegregate the Democratic Party at the 1968 convention, and was a lifelong activist. My grandmother, Marie Childs, was always in the community, a college graduate who fought to get an education post-World War II; she was a connector of activists in every community she entered. My parents were activists in their own right.
Like you, I learned history, heard every argument, and learned the importance of fighting for our communities at my grandparents’ kitchen table. Those stories of fighting and perseverance are seared into my memory. Their activism got me involved in democracy fights.
It was what brought me to eventually become the Executive Director of Mass Alliance, a coalition of then 29 progressive political organizations fighting to make our communities better every day.
It was their stories ringing in my ear when I heard a familiar call from the billionaire class to trust them as they moved a ballot initiative with one of their favorite tactics, eliminating partisan elections.
Question 3 is an explicit attack on the power of Black voters, and we need to reject it as the Black voter suppression initiative it is intended to be. Black voters make up the base of the Democratic Party. In partisan elections, unlike the general, we have an outsized say in candidates. This is an attempt to dilute our voice by taking away our ability to collectivize our voice through the primary election. Currently, Gateway cities and Boston have a larger say in Democratic primaries, outperforming our say in General elections in Massachusetts.
Start with a fact the Yes campaign leaves out: independent voters are not shut out of party primaries. Voters registered as “unenrolled” can already choose either party’s ballot on Election Day without joining a party. Question 3 is sold as opening up a system that excludes people. It excludes no one.
What Question 3 actually does is eliminate separate party primaries, place every candidate on one ballot, and send only the top two vote-getters to November, regardless of party. Its backers call this an “all-party primary.” It has long gone by another name: the jungle primary. The term took hold in Louisiana, and it is an honest description. Every candidate is thrown into one crowded field, and only the two strongest survive. Black voters should hear that name clearly. A system that rewards whoever has the most money and the biggest base was not designed with our communities in mind. It is not built for us.
In Boston, we do not have to guess how this plays out. Our mayoral elections already send the top two finishers from a single preliminary to November. In the entire history of Boston’s mayoral preliminaries, only two Black candidates have ever made the final: Mel King in 1983 and Tito Jackson in 2017. In the last two open races, Black candidates were shut out of the general election because several strong Black candidates ran and split the vote. The only way to avoid that under top-two is to clear the field, telling qualified Black candidates to stand down. That silences more Black candidates, not fewer.
Boston has also tested the alternative. From 1951 until 1983, every city councilor was elected at-large. Black and Latino neighborhoods could organize, turn out, and still be outvoted by the rest of the city. In 1981, voters adopted a hybrid council of nine district seats and four at-large seats, and two Black councilors joined the body. The lesson was clear: communities of color win representation when they can elect their own candidates without first surviving a citywide filter. Question 3 does not redraw districts, but it builds that same filter into every primary — one crowded field where a community’s votes can be split, and its candidate knocked out before November. Boston moved away from that model more than forty years ago. The Commonwealth should not move toward it now.
The Yes side also claims top-two produces more representative legislatures, usually pointing to California. But California adopted top-two alongside revised term limits and independent redistricting. Term limits force seats to open on a schedule, and open seats are where women and candidates of color most often break through, because incumbency is the greatest barrier to entry under any primary system. California is also 68 percent people of color, against 34 percent here. Crediting top-two for California’s numbers is crediting the wrong reform. Washington, a closer comparison, differs from Massachusetts by only a handful of legislative seats.
Meanwhile, Massachusetts has been gaining ground on representation over the past decade, under the very primary system Question 3 would discard. That progress came from recruitment, organizing, and candidates building the campaigns it takes to win. Our Legislature still does not look like the state it represents, and real work remains. But discarding party primaries is not that work.
Hearing all this, it becomes clear why private equity executives are rallying to Question 3.
The answer should be familiar, and unlike the organizations behind the No on 3 campaign, the Private Equity executives backing it are not interested in making your life better. Our coalition wakes up every day asking the simple question: how can we make Massachusetts work better for you?
“Hopefully, all of us who are saying No on 3 can be your guide to join us in saying No on 3 as well.”