Questions about the state’s cannabis industry, gun control and the creation of a natural resources conservation fund were cited by several Cambridge and Somerville voters on Tuesday as key issues on the 2026 state ballot.
On the eve of what looked like a blue wave nationwide and was certainly one in Massachusetts, Emmeline Laurence, 26, a Cambridge resident working in pharmaceuticals, said she wasn’t too concerned about any particular ballot issue, but the outcome of Question 9 – gun control – caught her attention.
“The gun safety one is probably the one that felt most important to me,” Laurence said.
One of the issues drawing the attention of Cambridge voter Violet Schwartz, 24, an insurance claims adjuster, was Question 8, on which she voted “No.” Question 8, if passed into law, would turn back the clock on the legalization of recreational marijuana use and sales. The industry was legalized with approval of a state ballot question only 10 years ago, but it took several years for regulations to be set and for shops to open.
“It’s not really hurting anybody, and I think that making it illegal is just opening the door for unsafe drug consumption,” Schwartz said. “It would also wipe out a lot of jobs.”
“No state has ever repealed that. I don’t see what the point would be,” Schwartz added, referring to legal sales of recreational cannabis.
Nicholas Travers, 43, a data scientist and a Cambridge resident for seven years, said he predicted election results would swing Congress broadly back to Democrats. But he doesn’t expect to feel the effects of a shift to blue from red until the 2028 presidential election.
“How much can you do when there’s division?” he said of his expected outcome: having a Republican president and a Democrat-majority Congress.
As for the nine Massachusetts state ballot questions, Travers’ described himself as being “yes-on-one,” an initiative that increases transparency in the state Legislature and Governor’s Office by adding them to the list of bodies that must respond to public records requests.
Jackie Roberti, 33, a software engineer and student at Boston University who has lived in Somerville for seven years, said she voted Democratic all the way down the ballot and in favor of Question 6, which would establish the Nature for All Fund, supporting natural resource conservation. The issue has personal significance to her, as she is pursuing her master’s degree in environmental science and plans to put it toward work in climate advocacy and policy change.
Travis Taylor, Roberti’s partner, who works in AI operations and is a 10-year Somerville resident, said that some of the ballot question initiatives – namely questions 8 and 9 about cannabis and gun control – tried to take the state backward.
The voters who spoke were found Tuesday at polling places at Cambridge City Hall and Somerville’s West Branch library near Davis Square.
This story is part of a partnership between the Cambridge Somerville Independent and the Boston University Department of Journalism’s Newsroom program.
