Voters Want Accountability. They Deserve Real Elections.

Last week, I appeared on WBUR’s Radio Boston with host Cristela Guerra. The following post expands on the topic we discussed our conversation. You can find a recording of the WBUR segment here.

Last month, Americans delivered an electoral rebuke to the country’s political institutions. Most voters did so by choosing Donald Trump to be their next president. Massachusetts, by contrast, gave Kamala Harris her third-strongest margin—and accordingly has not featured in analysis of the election’s implications. Yet the Commonwealth’s voters also dinged our political establishment, calling for a “performance audit” of the Massachusetts legislature in Ballot Question 1.

That ballot fight offers lessons for reviving faith in democracy after last November’s election. Here and nationwide, voters want more accountability from their government. Massachusetts should respond to that call by giving them real voice and choice on the ballot. For a strong democracy, we need competitive elections in Massachusetts.

The Legislative Audit in National Context

Question 1 (the legislative audit question) locates Massachusetts squarely in the same anti-institutional mood as the rest of the country—even if the Commonwealth expressed that mood differently than Wyoming or Texas.

The audit’s supporters—chiefly state Auditor Diana DiZoglio—campaigned on the idea that government is not effectively serving the people. Their themes were accountability, transparency, and legislative dysfunction. Voters responded with supermajority-levels of support; indeed, the audit was more popular than any other item on the ballot at the state level. Its 72% bested Vice President Harris (62%), Senator Warren (60%), and each of the four other statewide ballot questions. This support was as broad as it was deep: Only two of the state’s 351 municipalities gave Question 1 less than 60% of the vote.

We can see the same anti-status quo trend across data about this election and the political environment in which it took place:

• Turnout declined almost everywhere in 2024 compared to 2020, meaning that fewer voters felt compelled to participate in the election at all.

• Those who turned out to vote often left down-ballot races blank, rather than choosing any candidate. One in five voters left their State Senate race blank, for instance. In some districts, it was nearly one in three.

• Looking beyond November’s election, voters increasingly reject formal affiliation with either political party, choosing to register as “unenrolled” (meaning independent) rather than as a Democrat or Republican.

• Polling data tells a similar story: voters increasingly think Massachusetts is “on the wrong track,” and a plurality disapproved of the State Legislature even in September, before the Auditor’s Question 1 campaign kicked into high gear.

These results may be surprising for a state that just endorsed the apparently pro-institutional party for President and that tends to see itself as ahead of the rest of the country on democracy issues. They are less surprising given the many problems Massachusetts faces: not just low turnout in elections, but also sky-high housing prices, declining educational quality, terrible traffic, and an affordability-driven exodus of talent from the Commonwealth. With the country’s least productive state legislature, Massachusetts voters just don’t seem to see enough being done to address their problems and respond to their needs. So, they voted to give the state’s Auditor authority to audit the legislature’s performance.

Why the Audit Question Means We Need Real Elections

Question 1, then, was a signal from voters for more accountability. The Legislature, however, has made clear its powers and intent to frustrate the Auditor’s plans. One skirmish last week concerned when ballot questions go into effect, and there are many more legal and procedural hurdles to overcome. It remains unclear what the audit will look like or when it will start. The Auditor’s route to accountability is long and uncertain.

The good news is that our democracy has a built-in mechanism for enforcing accountability on elected representatives: competitive elections. In a healthy democracy, voters who feel disaffected with political institutions—who want more done to combat things like housing shortages, rush-hour gridlock, or struggling schools—should have the opportunity to choose new leaders (or affirmatively endorse their own representatives). Voters who want more voice in their government should have the means to demand it at the ballot box.

The problem is Massachusetts’ extremely low levels of choice on the ballot. In 2024, we actually had the least competitive legislative elections of all states in the country—just like in 2022, 2020, 2018, and 2016. Roughly 2 in 3 legislative elections went uncontested in November, meaning that most voters had no choice at all in their legislative representation. The lack of choice is most pronounced in cities, but it affects voters across Massachusetts.

Before this November, legislative leaders had a stock response to reporting on this problem. Massachusetts’ uncompetitive elections, they said, were proof of successful governance. It showed that voters broadly endorsed the legislature’s performance. Otherwise, wouldn’t candidates emerge—and wouldn’t voters bring in new leaders?

In November, voters told us otherwise. In addition to endorsing the audit, many voters rejected incumbents (or their political party) in the few competitive races, while contested elections had much lower levels of “blanking.” Voters also indirectly spurned political leaders in a ballot question scrapping the state’s requirement that students pass the MCAS (a standardized test) to graduate high school. Question 1—the audit question—was much more direct. Voters want more voice in their government; their lack of choice on the ballot cannot be interpreted as an endorsement of the legislature.

Each dot in this graph represents a state senate district in 2024. As elections get more competitive, fewer voters “blank” the race.

Where to Go from Here: Fight for Real Elections

Something else, then, must be keeping competition off the ballot. And if we want to give voters real voice—and thereby to achieve the accountability they called for in 2024—we should demand more choice on the ballot. One positive result of the Auditor’s campaign would be a flowering of energy to contest more elections.

Getting there will require more people to step forward on the ballot, and more organizations to focus their energies on recruiting and training down-ballot candidates. There are also policy changes Massachusetts could enact to make ballot access easier. Replacing partisan with nonpartisan primaries, for instance, has increased choice on the ballot in California, Washington State, and Alaska. Alaska’s and Maine’s adoption of ranked-choice voting seems to have increased the diversity of choices on the ballot. And certain campaign finance laws make it harder for candidates from diverse backgrounds to sustain a campaign. To give credit where it is due, the Legislature recently removed one of those barriers by allowing candidates to use their privately-raised campaign funds for childcare. That should be celebrated.

Overall, though, Massachusetts needs to do much more to give voters choice on the ballot. By doing so, the Commonwealth can meet voters’ demand for more accountability from their government. Answering that call in Massachusetts would set a strong example of what healthy, responsive democratic institutions can look like. Real accountability to the voters requires real elections. The future of pro-democracy politics nationwide runs through more choice on the ballot here in Massachusetts.