Get Your Vote On! Statewide Ballot Question #1

It’s not just the races for Governor, Lt. Governor, Attorney General, and State Treasurer that should be sending you to the polls on Tuesday, Nov. 4. Nor is it the fact that one of the Massachusetts U.S. Senate seats, all of Massachusetts’ seats in the U.S. Congress, and all the seats in both the Massachusetts State Senate and Massachusetts House of Representatives will be on the ballot. Nope. There’s more. Four statewide ballot questions will be put before all Massachusetts voters who show up at their local polling stations (To find out where you vote, go here: http://www.wheredoivotema.com/bal/myelectioninfo.aspx)

Question #1: Eliminating Gas Tax Indexing

The first ballot question proposes eliminating the current requirement that the state’s gasoline tax be 1) adjusted every year by the percentage change in the federal Consumer Price Index (CPI) over the preceding year but 2) never adjusted below 21.5 cents per gallon. The current state gas tax is 24 cents per gallon.

If voters approve the proposal, it will eliminate the requirement to adjust the gas tax based on the CPI. If voters strike the proposal down, no changes will be made to the gas tax.

Proponents

Proponents claim the question “simply stops the linkage of the gas tax to inflation.” They argue the legislature should always take a vote to raise any tax and that automatic tax increases constitute “taxation without representation.”

Opponents

Opponents claim the question, if approved, would threaten “the safety of you and your family,” by eliminating existing gas tax revenues needed to upgrade the state’s “structurally deficient or functionally obsolete” bridges and roads.

Read up on Question 1, ponder it, and make your voice heard come Nov. 4. And if you’re not registered to vote, well, you really, really should be.

Click here to get registered to vote: http://artistsunderthedome.org/malc/calls-to-action/get-vote-register-nov-4th-election/

For more info on the ballot questions: http://www.sec.state.ma.us/ele/elebalquestinfo.htm

Stay tuned for more posts on statewide ballot questions #2-4!