BOSTON — Musicians hauling three drums, two trombones, a saxophone and and a tuba played their way up Park Street to the corner of Beacon on Tuesday afternoon — blocking traffic and leading dozens of ralliers in the day’s 90-degree heat — to celebrate that app-based drivers who want to unionize took another step toward the ballot.
The festivities were a sign of momentum shared elsewhere across the ballot-question landscape as an end-of-day deadline further clarified what’s still in play, turning up the heat on lawmakers who may be mulling eleventh-hour compromises.
Backers of all six proposed ballot questions confirmed Tuesday they filed voter signatures with local elections officials for review, one of the final hurdles before sponsors can lock in a spot on the Nov. 5 ballot.
At their rally outside the State House, unions and workers aligned with the Drivers Demand Justice Coalition cited signature-gathering success while calling on the Legislature to immediately pass a bill (H 1099 / S 66) that might avert their need to go to the ballot.
Attendees claimed that “by bill or by ballot,” they would secure union rights for Uber and Lyft drivers.
Union representatives and workers aligned with the Drivers Demand Justice Coalition march up Park Street to the steps in front of the State House on Tuesday celebrating that they have enough signatures to bring the question of Uber and Lyft driver unionization to the November 2024 ballot.
“There’s a lot of support right now for organizing rights for workers,” 32BJ SEIU assistant to the president Roxana Rivera told the News Service. “People very much know Uber and Lyft, they are very well-known companies, so we’ve seen a lot of public support and we’re confident that we can win at the ballot.”
The union-backed group is open to legislative options, Rivera said, adding that there is still time for lawmakers to come up with a solution that would keep the question off the ballot.
“We can not permit out-of-state app companies to manipulate the system against everyday families here, creating special exemptions for two of the most unregulated mega-corporations, Uber and Lyft,” said International Association of Machinists District 15 representative Mike DiCooco. “That’s why we agree that by bill or by ballot, we’re going to win bargaining rights for drivers this year.”
Meanwhile, those companies and their allies are also marching onward with their own ballot measure.
A spokesperson for the industry-backed campaign working to declare in state law that drivers are independent contractors, not employees, said Tuesday that organizers submitted signatures on all five drafts of their question still in play. Some of the drafts would also extend new benefits to drivers.
Leaders of that campaign have said they intend to place only one question before voters, but want to keep multiple options alive in case the courts deem one or several versions ineligible.
The Supreme Judicial Court heard oral arguments in early May about whether the questions were correctly certified, and insiders expect a decision to be handed down any day.
Two years ago, the coalition funded by Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and Instacart spent election season on the sidelines after the SJC tossed an earlier version of the question — which at the time consisted of one lone proposal instead of multiple options — for improperly combining multiple topics.
Backers of ballot questions that would eliminate the use of MCAS exams as a graduation requirement and decriminalize psychedelic substances also told the News Service they filed signatures by Tuesday’s deadline.
The national campaign working on a measure increasing what businesses must pay tipped workers said last week they were in the “final phase of signature collection,” and the campaign confirmed Tuesday that it filed its signatures ahead of Tuesday’s deadline.
Campaigns are required to submit signatures from at least 12,429 registered voters in one of the final hurdles of the current cycle. Those were due to city and town clerks for certification by the end of the day Tuesday, and then certified signatures must be filed with Secretary of State William Galvin’s office by July 3 to secure a spot on the ballot.
Auditor Diana DiZoglio was one step ahead of Tuesday’s deadline.
DiZoglio, who has been pushing a ballot question that would explicitly authorize her office to audit the Legislature, on Tuesday posted a video of herself wheeling boxes of signatures to deliver to Galvin’s office. She asserted that her campaign has gathered enough signatures to qualify her initiative petition for the November ballot.
A spokesperson for her campaign confirmed that organizers submitted signatures to local officials for certification earlier in the process and dropped off the required amount at Galvin’s office Tuesday.
“We are on the ballot! Today, we turned in the additional 13k signatures needed. THANK YOU! This is the time to let that sunshine in!” the auditor wrote in her post on X.
In the video, DiZoglio drops a box of signatures on the counter in the secretary of state’s office while Taylor Swift’s “Ready For It?” plays.
The Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance aided DiZoglio’s signature collection effort by mailing 15,000 households a copy of the signature petition page, along with instructions and an envelope, and asking voters to submit their signatures by the June 18 deadline.
Lawmakers are running out of time to broker any legislative compromises that would obviate the chance for voters to get the final say.
One top Democrat said this month that legislators were discussing alternatives to at least the MCAS and driver questions, but so far, any private talks have not produced concrete results with just more than two weeks left until sponsors need to lock in a spot on the ballot.
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