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Massachusetts Disclosure of Foreign Political Expenditures Initiative (2018)
| Massachusetts Disclosure of Foreign Political Expenditures Initiative | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Election date November 6, 2018 | |
| Topic Elections and campaigns | |
| Status Not on the ballot | |
| Type State statute | Origin Citizens |
The Massachusetts Disclosure of Foreign Political Expenditures Initiative was not on the ballot in Massachusetts as an indirect initiated state statute on November 6, 2018.
The measure would have required the origin of donations for all political expenditures to be made public through the Office of Campaign and Political Finance. The measure would have also required that ads, email, and other electioneering communications by committees that received foreign funding contain a disclaimer of foreign funding.[1]
Text of measure
Full text
The full text of the measure is available here.
Path to the ballot
In Massachusetts, the number of signatures required to place an indirect initiated state statute on the ballot is equal to 3.5 percent of votes cast for governor in the most recent gubernatorial election. The first 3 percent is collected in order to refer the indirect initiative to the Massachusetts General Court. If members of the General Court pass and the governor signs the initiative, then the initiative becomes law. If the legislature declines to act on an initiative or the governor vetoes it, sponsors of the initiative need to collect additional signatures equal to 0.5 percent of the votes cast for governor.
To make the 2018 ballot, sponsors of this initiative needed to collect the first round of 64,750 signatures between September 20, 2017, and November 22, 2017. If enough signatures had been submitted by the deadline on December 6, 2017, the initiative would have been sent to the General Court. Then, if legislators rejected or did not act on the initiative, an additional 10,792 signatures would have been required by July 4, 2018.
On September 6, 2017, Attorney General Maura Healey (D) rejected the proposal as "inconsistent with freedom of speech."[2] Therefore, proponents of the measure could not collect signatures to get the initiative on the ballot.
See also
Footnotes
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