Ballot questions can energize and draw voters based on the issue being decided. Less well appreciated: The turnout they generate can affect — and perhaps even decide — the outcome of other contests on the ballot.
Lawrence S. DiCara
Posted inPolitics
Voting choices not a simple matter
I HAVE BEEN thinking about who votes for whom and why for a long time. I have been through plenty of campaigns and have sliced and diced numbers for decades. Notwithstanding the availability of far more information than we could have ever imagined decades ago, there is still no one simple answer as to who […]
Posted inOpinion
Bold thinking required at I-90 Allston interchange
SOMETIME IN THE mid-1950s, my mother packed the three of us into our black ’52 Plymouth and drove us onto the then-brand-new Southeast Expressway. She probably took us up the ramp at Neponset Circle, got off in South Boston, and drove us to L Street beach. I remember her telling us that this was the […]
Posted inHealth Care
Anti-vaxxers aren’t the main problem
DESPITE THE BELIEF that low vaccination rates are due to anti-vaxxers – those opposed in principle to vaccination — the majority of people who have not vaccinated their children in Massachusetts are not anti-vaccine. Most unvaccinated children are in that gap because of issues of access or other logistical reasons. Legislation proposed on Beacon Hill […]
Posted inEducation
Funding plus reform right equation for education legislation
NOTWITHSTANDING JOHN ADAMS’S almost sacred words enshrined in the Massachusetts Constitution, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was a Johnny come lately with respect to state aid to education, with its earliest efforts being enacted after World War II. In 1993, we changed all that, recommitting in earnest to Adams’s great dictate that the Commonwealth’s government “cherish” […]
Posted inOpinion
Time to stop zoning out children
DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGES have accelerated in Boston and elsewhere in recent years. There has been an increase in healthy older people who may no longer want to live in single-family housing and worry about “SST”—snow, stairs, and trash. These Boomers are too young to live in assisted living and usually too affluent to qualify for any […]
Posted inEducation
Mass. cities losing clout in ed funding fight
WE PREVIOUSLY CO-AUTHORED an article in CommonWealth detailing the increasing discrepancies in municipal finance between the “haves” and the “have-nots” among Massachusetts cities and towns. It should not be surprising, therefore, that we are concerned about antiquated funding formulas that create a similar divide when it comes to state aid to education in Massachusetts. The issue […]
Posted inOpinion
Did primary turnout in Boston mark a turning point?
RECENT ELECTION RETURNS have generated much discussion as to a change in voting patterns in Massachusetts and elsewhere across the country. The research we have done over a period of years has concluded that there is a different Boston electorate – and a much larger one – during quadrennial November presidential elections. The turnout is […]
Posted inPolitics
‘A child shall lead them’
ONE OF US (LSD) is a Democrat. The other (PR) is a Republican. We disagree on many issues, but on the issue of access to assault rifles, we are in agreement. After initial efforts focused on the Florida legislature, an entire nation has now witnessed young people, and many not so young people, peacefully take […]
Posted inPolitics
Boston city council races reflect change – and tradition
THEODORE H. WHITE WROTE many years ago that the life of a city is like a ballet. Anybody who has studied the American city, specifically the City of Boston, understands that there are rapid demographic changes underway. Boston is no longer mentioned in the same paragraph with Detroit, St. Louis, Cleveland and other cities that […]