Referendum Questions Impact Elections

For over a century, many referendum questions have been placed on the ballot in states across the nation; they often impact the outcome of elections.? Some, such as Proposition 13 in California capping local property taxes, were high profile national news. Others such as same-sex marriage questions on the ballot in many states in 2004 may have impeded John Kerry’s candidacy for President. Some observers believe the increased turnout from voters opposed to gay marriage cost Kerry the election, which may have been intentional. More recently, pro-choice forces have taken to the ballot to protect abortion rights. They have largely been victorious, most notably in Kansas, one of the more traditionally conservative states in the nation. I expect women in Kansas voted in that referendum who were not regular, or even typically liberal, voters. Arizona and Florida will have questions to overturn their states’ abortion bans on the 2024 ballot, as will other states.

? Here in Massachusetts, we have our own tradition of referendum questions being placed on the ballot which have influenced major elections. (Along with Maine, the Commonwealth is one of only two states in the northeast to provide for citizen-initiated referendum questions.) In 1949, the New Boston Committee, led by a young Harvard Law School graduate Jerome Lyle Rappaport, successfully collected signatures to place a question on the ballot to reorganize city government. The New Boston Committee included many returning World War II veterans. The movement for change increased voter turnout in the 1949 election and, in the opinion of some observers, assisted in the defeat of James Michael Curley, who was seeking reelection as mayor.

? While DiCara was serving on the Boston City Council, he worked with then-Representative Bill Galvin and a coalition of citizens to place a referendum question on the ballot to reorganize the school committee and the city council. Although that effort did not succeed in 1977, that year saw a far higher turnout than in the prior “off year” election of 1973. The question may have failed on a cold and rainy day, but Louise Day Hicks – who topped the City Council ticket in 1969, 1973 and 1975 – was defeated, as was her colleague John J. Kerrigan. Simultaneously John D. O’Bryant, a man of color, was elected to the School Committee, defeating Pixie Palladino. The question succeeded in 1981 with the help of funding from the leaders of the business community who agreed with the proponents that something was really wrong with a City Council and a School Committee where almost all the people elected were either Irish or Italian. Perhaps the increased turnout in 1981 helped to also elect “four fresh faces” – McCormack, McDermott, Hennigan, and Bolling.

? More recently, we have seen referenda which have succeeded in reducing the rate of the state income tax (2000 Question 4) and in rolling back an increase in the gas tax (2014 Question 1). Perhaps they also spiked turnout in those years.

? The granddaddy of them all, however, was 1948. Tip O’Neill was seeking to be the first Democratic Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. One referendum question dealt with workers’ rights to unionize. Another would have legalized the distribution of birth control advice to married women by doctors. To the late William Saltonstall (whose father Senator Leverett Saltonstall eked out a victory for reelection over John I. Fitzgerald), it was close because pastors across Massachusetts suggested it was important that their parishioners vote on these important questions.

? It appears from a review of the election returns that the turnout was very high. Not only did the ballot questions energize organized labor and anti-contraception voters, it was also the first presidential election in which servicemen were back in Massachusetts. Many Democrats, most of them Catholics, defeated long-standing Republican members of the House, which then had 240 members. Therefore, our robust democracy sometimes works its ways with unintended consequences: for the first time in history, Democrats had taken control of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. They also managed to defeat the incumbent Republican Governor.

? O’Neill credited the ballot questions for the Democrats’ sweeping victory. (“We were lucky that in 1948 just about everything was going our way,” he later wrote.) Turnout statewide was 86.7%. In the City of Boston, 85.3%. Some precincts saw nearly every voter turnout: Ward 21 Precinct 8, at 97%, and Ward 14 Precincts 16 (94%) & 18 (95%), heavily Jewish neighborhoods in Wards that voted in favor of the contraception question. Ward 18 Precinct 17, at 93%, was more typical of the city’s mood, in a ward that voted 66%-34% against the contraception referendum. Legislative Democrats flipped a 48-seat deficit in the Massachusetts House into a narrow 4 seat margin, and made Tip O’Neill the 73rd Speaker of Massachusetts House of Representatives.

? Referendum questions do not exist in a vacuum. Voters expect their candidates to take a position: in 1948, while the Democratic Party came out in favor of the pro-labor and anti-contraception positions, the Republican Party, with few exceptions, aligned closely with businesses interests opposed to the union questions, and refused to take a position on the contraception question at their state convention. These ballot questions also did not just move voters who normally wouldn’t turn out, but impacted voters’ decision at the ballot box for other races. High-profile referendums do not only change voters’ minds, they can literally set the bounds for the entire debate. Referendums have both a turnout effect and a persuasion effect.

? As voters prepare to tackle referendums protecting abortion this fall, political observers should keep in mind not only how issue campaigns can motivate voters and affect partisan contests, but also how these questions will frame the narrative of the election this fall. Politicians should heed that not taking a clear position on these issues can sink them almost as much as taking the wrong one. For example, former President Donald Trump, after “see-sawing” on this important issue for many months, will vote no on Florida’s Amendment 4, which would lift that state’s abortion ban. Although the nation’s, and Massachusetts’ view toward the subject has swung dramatically in the other direction since 1948, the intensity of the issue has not. In certain states, voters turning out to protect abortion rights could decide the presidential election.

?Lawrence S. DiCara is an attorney and former Boston City Council President. James Nichols-Worley is a student at Georgetown University.