In Massachusetts, "ballot candy" is prohibited in the State Constitution and the Supreme Judicial Court regularly tosses measures that run afoul of this prohibition. A recent example was they threw out Uber/Lyft's question that would make keep their employees as contractors but give them limited benefits (like the one they successfully p…
In Massachusetts, "ballot candy" is prohibited in the State Constitution and the Supreme Judicial Court regularly tosses measures that run afoul of this prohibition. A recent example was they threw out Uber/Lyft's question that would make keep their employees as contractors but give them limited benefits (like the one they successfully passed in California). This was actually because the ballot question also limited the liability of the ride share companies, and not because of the tying of benefits to contactor status, which the court found to be sufficiently related.
The exception is a constitutional amendment, which is allowed to address multiple issues. The "millionaire's tax" is an example of this. They originally tried to go the regular ballot question route to get an extra tax on incomes over $1,000,000 with the revenue being earmarked for education and transportation, but were told that spending and revenue were two distinct questions, so they went back and did the much more cumbersome path of getting an amendment on the ballot. Personally I think this is unfortunate, since we now have spending written into the State Constitution, but Education especially is a large portion of the annual budget and the revenue raised by new tax is fairly small.
In Massachusetts, "ballot candy" is prohibited in the State Constitution and the Supreme Judicial Court regularly tosses measures that run afoul of this prohibition. A recent example was they threw out Uber/Lyft's question that would make keep their employees as contractors but give them limited benefits (like the one they successfully passed in California). This was actually because the ballot question also limited the liability of the ride share companies, and not because of the tying of benefits to contactor status, which the court found to be sufficiently related.
The exception is a constitutional amendment, which is allowed to address multiple issues. The "millionaire's tax" is an example of this. They originally tried to go the regular ballot question route to get an extra tax on incomes over $1,000,000 with the revenue being earmarked for education and transportation, but were told that spending and revenue were two distinct questions, so they went back and did the much more cumbersome path of getting an amendment on the ballot. Personally I think this is unfortunate, since we now have spending written into the State Constitution, but Education especially is a large portion of the annual budget and the revenue raised by new tax is fairly small.
As a Massachusetts voter, extra-love that detail!
Tremendous information here. This is why we have a comment board in the first place!