In Massachusetts, voting is frequently pointless. More often than not, your vote cannot influence who wins an election.
That is not a pessimistic statement, it is a fact. About 54% of voters this year will not get to decide who will represent them in the state legislature, because neither their representative in the House nor Senate will face an opponent on Nov. 3. Only about 12% of voters will have an actual choice for who represents them in the House and Senate.
Have things always been this bad? Pretty much. A nationwide comparison by Ballotpedia shows that in 2020 and 2022, Massachusetts had the highest number of uncontested legislative races in the country. In 2024, the commonwealth narrowly took second place with 73% uncontested races (only Wyoming fared worse, with 77%).
Going back further, an analysis of state election data found that between 2002 and 2024, 61% of all races at the state, county, or federal level went unchallenged in Mass. In the last 20 years, there was only one time—in 2010—when fewer than half of the races to fill spots in the state legislature went uncontested. The phenomenon was likely spurred by a wave of so-called Tea Party Patriots, who as one booster put it, “helped harness anger on the right in the 2010 midterms to topple Democratic incumbents.” That year, only 44% of state legislative seats went uncontested.
What Question 3 calls for
Depending on who you ask, Question 3 on this year’s ballot may offer a chance for Massachusetts voters to uproot undemocratic electoral precedents. Per the official description, the “proposed law would eliminate political party primaries for state elections and instead establish a system where there would be a single, all-party primary in which all candidates, regardless of their party affiliation, would be listed on one ballot, and voters could vote for any candidate on the ballot.”
If the referendum passes, “the two candidates receiving the most votes in the primary would advance to the general election ballot.” Furthermore, the new “law would require candidates for governor and lieutenant governor to run and be listed jointly on the ballot in the primary.” And for independents, the “proposed law would provide political party status to any group whose candidates for any statewide office received at least 3% of the ballots cast in the state primary.”
The real impact of such a dramatic change is hotly debated, including by many observers and experts who are otherwise aligned. In order to find answers ahead of Election Day, we analyzed data from past state elections, and spoke with both fans and opponents of the ballot question to kill party primaries.
The arguments for and against Question 3
“There are lots of ballots where you go down the list of offices, and there’s only one name. And when that happens, we can’t hold elected officials accountable.”
Danielle Allen is a Harvard professor, a one-time Democratic candidate for Massachusetts governor, and chair of the Coalition for a Healthy Democracy, also known as the “Yes on 3” committee. In an interview for this article, she said politicians “take voters for granted, and then that means we don’t get the changes we deserve, whether that’s around affordability, or housing, or whatever other issue is pressing.”
None of the political scientists or operatives we interviewed for this article expressed satisfaction with the current state of Massachusetts politics. Still, not all believe that Allen’s plan would make things better. That includes Jordan Berg Powers, a political consultant and chair of Voter Rights MA, the “No on 3” committee. According to Powers, the reforms that Question 3 proposes would “entrench all of the problems and make it worse.” He explained, “We have problems with money in politics. This makes it worse. We have a problem with too many insiders and too much horse race coverage. This turns [every campaign] into a horse race.”
Berg Powers previously sat on the board of Partners in Democracy, a 501(c)(4) where Allen is president. He said the rich and powerful “are counting on” populist dissatisfaction with the status quo, and added that he saw it play out first hand in Allen’s Mass-based nonprofit.
“They literally brought together all these groups,” Berg Powers said of Partners in Democracy. “We all had so many ideas on how to reform our democracy. And they took all of our complaints and none of our solutions. Which is, like, par for the course. That’s often what billionaires do: take people’s dissatisfaction with something and say, we’re here to help, and then they just steal it from us and make it work for them.”
Jonathan Cohn, who chairs the elections and issues committees for the group Progressive Massachusetts, echoed the sentiments of Berg Powers. Half-joking, Cohn said the most dangerous words in the English language are, We’re from private equity, and we’re here to help. The mockery is rooted in actual numbers, including ones with lots of zeroes.
According to the Massachusetts Office of Campaign and Political Finance, the Coalition for a Healthy Democracy behind Question 3 raised almost $7 million as of Oct. 5. Partners in Democracy has donated approximately $82,000 in services, but the cash is largely coming in from private equity or finance. David “Randy” Peeler, who is listed as a senior advisor at the private equity firm Berkshire Partners, is the campaign’s largest donor, contributing a total of $1,050,000 to date.
The “No on 3” campaign has raised $184,275, most of it from the Service Employees International Union Local 1199, and the Massachusetts Democratic State Committee.
A nationwide effort
Peeler also contributed more than $4 million to the Unite America PAC, which is funding campaigns for similar electoral reforms across the country. To date, the political action committee has funded failed efforts for primary reform in Arizona, Nevada, Montana, Colorado, Idaho, and South Dakota. It was also behind a ranked-choice ballot question in Massachusetts in 2020, which failed by a margin of roughly 55% (opposed) to 45% (in favor).
Unite America has also received large contributions from other individuals in the financial sector, including donors from Bain Capital. The PAC’s founder is Charles Wheelan, author of “The Centrist Manifesto.” That book was billed as “a vision―and detailed road map to power―for a new party that will champion America’s rational center.” But according to Allen, Question 3 “is not a centrist campaign.” Rather, she draws similarities to Boston’s nonpartisan mayoral preliminaries.
“You’ve got Michelle Wu in Boston elected out of the same kind of system, for example,” Allen said. “Progressives win in this system.” She argued that these races, often called “jungle primaries,” have chameleonic qualities: “Centrists win in Louisiana, and Alaska, where there have been variants, conservatives win. It just depends on who the people are in the district. This is a status quo-busting campaign.”
In 2025, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu won reelection with 92% of the vote after her opponent dropped out of the race following an underwhelming prelim showing. Both candidates are Democrats, but could have subsequently faced off in the general election. Wu opposes Question 3, and did not respond to a request for comment.
Table
A cure for third-party irrelevance?
Interestingly, spokespeople on both sides of this ballot debate cite past elections in two particular states as proof of their claims. “Yes on 3” supporters say that nonpartisan primaries in California and Washington have more democratic contours than Bay State elections; the opposition claims the opposite, that those West Coast systems are far worse. The accompanying chart shows where Mass stands between them.
Alex Rikleen, who this year unsuccessfully ran to represent Mass in the US Senate, said that he is voting “yes” on Question 3 because single-party primaries are “toxically anti-democratic.” The Wayland resident said the current primaries are especially bad for third-party candidates.
“There is no such thing as worse for third parties than the status quo,” Rikleen said. “There is only continued irrelevance or better. … The reality is third parties in Massachusetts are not taken seriously.” Speaking of this year’s Massachusetts Senate candidate for the Party for Socialism and Liberation, Rikleen added, “I mentioned Joe Tache more on the campaign trail than any major media organization did. And I was running against the guy.”
Asked what he thought about Question 3, Tache, who is running against Sen. Ed Markey in the general election, said he is “strongly opposed” to a “top-two” primary system. “It would become much more difficult for us to make it on to the general election ballot, and our campaigns would be cut short by months,” Tache said.
The third-party Senate hopeful added: “There is a reason why the ‘Yes on 3’ campaign is being funded by private equity executives and other billionaires. The top-two primary system benefits the candidates who start out with the most funding, and grassroots campaigns like ours get left in the dust.
“If we want to stop the billionaires from being able to handpick who appears on our general election ballot, we need to vote no on Question 3.”
