In their critique of Question 3, political scientist Jerold Duquette and law professor Lawrence Friedman accurately describe how parties should operate in democracies:
- Parties should play a “meaningful role in choosing the candidates who run as members of their parties”
- “The most meaningful single piece of information about candidates for most voters is their party label.”
- “For party labels to provide meaningful cues, there must be a tangible and enforceable accountability relationship between a party and its candidates and officeholders.”
- “Allowing parties to provide voters a meaningful choice between candidates in November connects elections to policy decisions.”
However, this description in no way matches the Massachusetts reality. Here, by law, political parties do not choose their own candidates. Any office-seeker can enroll as a Democrat or Republican and submit nominating petitions to enter the primary to become the party’s official standard bearer. But surely party members decide who among the self-selected candidates best represents them? Actually, no. Non-members can vote in party primaries, and more than 60 percent of Massachusetts voters are not enrolled in a party. Even if we were to again restrict the primary to party members, the party by law has no control over who decides to become a “member” by checking a box on the voter registration form.
Because parties are just labels selected by candidates, elections have long ago become candidate-centric. Inexplicably, Duquette and Friedman fail to see that this evolution happened long ago, rather than being a novel threat from Question 3. Each candidate is their own party, with independent mailing lists, donors, and activists. We see the candidate’s name prominently on ads, mailers, or yard signs for state and Federal offices in Massachusetts but the party is usually not even mentioned.
In most cases party labels “lack real meaning” (to use Duquette and Friedman’s words) in Massachusetts already. In almost all legislative elections, there are no party labels in the determinative election — the dominant party’s primary (that is, the election is labeled but the candidates are not, except to identify who is the incumbent and other public officeholders). Where there is competition between the parties, such as the race for Governor, voters need to look beyond the label. There have been five Republican Governors of the Commonwealth in the past 35 years, and all of them sharply distanced themselves from the Republican party brand.
Duquette and Friedman claim that “Question 3 would eliminate the ability of Bay State parties to police the use of their party labels by candidates in elections and sever the only meaningful accountability link between candidates/officeholders and party platforms.” It turns out that the Massachusetts Democratic Party has an official party platform, and the 2025 version promised single-payer healthcare, a price on carbon pollution, ending the ban on rent control, elimination of subminimum wages, removal of mandatory minimum sentences for all crimes, the elimination of cash bail, the North/South Station Rail Link, fare-free public transit, an independent redistricting commission, public financing of elections, ranked choice voting, and democratic selection of legislative committee chairs. Needless to say, the Legislature with its two-thirds Democratic majority enacted exactly none of these proposals, and many of them are actively opposed by its Democratic leadership. In other words, the party platform is an irrelevant wish list that is unknown to the voters and therefore there is no “enforceable accountability.”
Instead, the real decision-making resides with the secretive, opaque legislative Leadership. Good luck finding House Speaker Ron Mariano’s platform. Speaker Mariano—now 79—sits at the apex of an institution designed to resist voter accountability at all costs. Even when he eventually departs, nothing changes: power will simply pass to his designated successor in a closed-door, uncontested caucus vote.
Consider his presumed heir apparent, Ways and Means Chair Aaron Michlewitz. Originally hired as a 26-year-old constituent aide by then-Speaker Salvatore DiMasi, Michlewitz entered the House after winning a low-turnout special election by just 171 votes following DiMasi’s resignation ahead of a federal indictment. In the 15 years since, he has never faced a primary or general election opponent, all while amassing hundreds of thousands of dollars annually in campaign contributions. That is how legislative leadership reproduces itself: not through party mandates or competitive elections, but through an uncontested, self-funded patronage system.
What would it take to make parties relevant? Real political parties must be able to control the use of their name. Question 3 moves us in this direction by allowing both existing official parties (those receiving at least 3% of the vote in any statewide race in the prior election) and political designations (created by submitting the names of 50 voters) to endorse candidates in the first round, and have those endorsements printed on the ballot. Crucially, the endorsement requires the consent of both the candidate and the party.
Duquette and Friedman argue that “Question 3 would complicate the timing and increase the costs of running for office. If its proponents’ objectives include empowering marginalized voices and minor parties, then increasing the costs while reducing the time to organize and campaign seems particularly unwise. Supporters rarely mention the extra burden this system would impose on candidates.” This critique does not match the current reality: on the one hand wealthy candidates in statewide races can and do spend millions of their own money (Mike Minogue has used $17M of his own millions so far in the current campaign for Governor). On the other hand, incumbent legislators rack up contributions year after year running unopposed, and use the accumulated war chest to deter any challengers. This is usually successful, but when there is a serious challenger, experience shows that while it is necessary to have significant funding, it is not essential to match the incumbent dollar for dollar. Challengers would be far better off having the opportunity to compete in the November election, taking advantage of the free media that would arise from finishing first or second in the first round.
Furthermore, with its novel endorsement option, Question 3 would allow new parties to build their own brands, and ultimately field slates of candidates that could campaign jointly. This pooling of resources could help enormously to overcome the inherent advantage of incumbency, while focusing campaigns on policies and programs rather than individuals.
Question 3 is undoubtedly an improvement over the status quo, but there are further improvements we could make that would increase competition and accountability and elevate political parties in the ways that Duquette, Friedman, and I agree are crucial to choice and accountability, such as:
- Eliminate party enrollment as part of the voter registration system, so that the only labels on the ballot would be those that have the consent of a registered party;
- Provide uniform financing rules for all parties, old and new;
- Condense the first and second rounds of the election into a single ranked choice voting contest (or, better yet, multiwinner RCV for legislative districts, but that would require a constitutional amendment);
- Replace nominating papers with a filing fee that would be refundable to candidates receiving at least 3% of the vote.
- Return the filing deadline to 1 month before the election instead of the current 7 months.
If Massachusetts adopted these rules we would have accountability overnight, since parties could refuse to let elected officials continue to use the party name if they strayed too far from the party platform. We would also have much more voter information on the ballot, because there would be an array of brand new party names to choose from.
Opponents of Question 3 claim it would destroy the accountability of political parties. In truth, it creates an accountability mechanism Massachusetts has never had. Under the status quo, parties cannot stop anyone from running under their name, and legislative leaders can safely ignore their own party’s platform without electoral consequence. By replacing an open, candidate-hijacked primary with a system where party endorsements require actual organizational consent, Question 3 doesn’t weaken party accountability—it finally makes it possible.