‘No’ on Ballot Question 3 Is a No To Private Equity

What do Berkshire Partners, Bain Capital, and Cove Hill Partners all have in common?

More obviously, they’re all private equity companies. Less obviously, each one has senior officials and employees who have collectively dumped around $3.39 million into a campaign to get Massachusetts to vote “yes” on Ballot Question 3. If that alone does not set off the alarm bells of a bought-and-sold ballot, perhaps this scenario will.

Imagine a state with ten voters: eight are Democrats, two are Republicans. Primaries roll around, and each party independently selects candidates to face off in the general election. One might immediately point out something concerning about this: if, say, five voters selected one Democrat, and three voters selected a different Democrat, the losing Democrat would still have more popular support than the winning Republican’s two votes.

So let’s do away with this system entirely. We’ll put all the candidates, regardless of party, in the same pool. The two candidates with the most votes will advance. Now, each of the eight Democrats selects a different candidate. One chooses the candidate focused on reducing carbon emissions, another the pro-union candidate, and another the anti-zoning candidate. The Republicans, a minority in the state, choose one. While a Democrat and Republican still make it to the general election in this scenario, the Republican candidate now receives the most votes in a state with a Democratic supermajority. If we scale the numbers up to, say, two million voters, two Republicans could easily garner the most votes and effectively lock out the interests of the majority of voters in that state.

This is what nearly occurred in the 2026 California gubernatorial elections (the state adopted the top-two system in 2010), and it is a reality of Ballot Question 3’s so-called jungle primaries.

Of course, Massachusetts elections are historically blue, and minority Republicans are unlikely to immediately overtake local elections. But the PE-backed push for a flawed top-two system is, in itself, symptomatic of a larger failure in American politics: the viability problem.

Electoral success in this country depends not just on a candidate’s policy and values, but on campaign finance. Candidates with more funding have more name recognition, more ability to advertise, and benefit from an electorate that may vote for the only name on the ballot they’ve even heard. It is no coincidence that wealthy donors are throwing money at Ballot Question 3. The establishment feeds on an electoral system that is easy to game, easier to buy, and largely inaccessible to the average voter.

A top-two primary gives them just that. When Democrats in California worried they would split the vote in the 2018 midterms, outside actors spent $108 million on candidates for the House of Representatives alone — nearly double what they spent in 2016.

It is clear that jungle primaries don’t solve the issue of viability. They can give wealthy parties more leeway for interference by, in essence, creating a free-for-all. With more names on the ballot, voters are even less likely to distinguish between them substantively on merit. Far from challenging the status quo, this system dilutes the power of grassroots organizations and third-party candidates, reinforcing the power of indolent moderates.

I agree with the proposal’s advocates that the healthiest version of democracy is a competitive one. I agree that incumbents have far too much power in the Massachusetts electoral process (an astonishing 60 percent of state House and state Senate seats will run uncontested this November), decreasing accountability and contributing to what has been deemed the least transparent state government in the country.

But is the most just version of an election the one where getting ahead is as easy as making a donation?

Our electoral process is in dire need of reform. But implementing a policy whose costs far outweigh the benefits creates a false sense of progress, preventing us from enacting real change in a broken system.

Massachusetts residents deserve new and exciting candidates that will shake up — and tear down — the establishment. Expanding voter registration and education, along with stronger campaign finance restrictions and a push for publicly funded campaigns, are far more effective strategies for increasing civic engagement. Likewise, ranked-choice voting can increase competition and third-party participation without the viability issue.

If Ballot Question 3 passes, we risk becoming idle under the guise of productive reform.

On the surface, the jungle is fair. Battle it out, and the strongest will come out on top. But the jungle is a far scarier place when billionaire backers fund the predators — and we become the prey.

Bay Staters have rightly expressed their frustration with private equity tycoons taking over our hospitals and single-family homes. Don’t let elections be their next conquest. Vote “no” on Proposition 3.

Sylvia A. Langer ’28, an Associate Editorial editor, is a Chemical and Physical Biology concentrator in Currier House.