How this site is made

What this is, and what it isn't

This is a companion to the state's Information for Voters, the red book that arrives in your mailbox. It is not a replacement for it. The red book prints the full legal text of each question and the arguments written by the campaigns themselves. Those are primary sources. Summarizing them is useful; replacing them is not something this site tries to do, and every question page links to the red book for that reason.

This site does not endorse. No question page recommends a vote, and none will.

How a question page gets written

1. Start from the filed text. The "what a YES vote does" and "what a NO vote does" language traces back to the petition as filed and the Secretary of the Commonwealth's official summary, not to news coverage of it.
2. Separate facts from predictions. A change to a formula is a fact and gets stated as one. What that change does to future budgets is a prediction, and gets attributed to whoever is predicting it.
3. Give both sides their actual argument. Not just who is for and against, but what each side says and why. Campaign claims are labeled as campaign claims.
4. Pull the money from the filings. Funding figures come from OCPF campaign finance reports, with donors named. Where a filing doesn't break something out, the page says so rather than guessing.
5. Read it back against the petition, line by line. Anything that can't be traced to a source gets cut.
6. Stamp it. Every question page carries the date its content was last checked.

Where AI fits

I used Claude, an AI system made by Anthropic, to draft copy and write the code. That's worth saying plainly rather than leaving in a footnote, because it's a reasonable thing for a reader to want to know.

What that means in practice: a model drafts, I check every line against the filed text, and only then does it go up. Nothing here is published straight out of a model, and the model does not decide what gets published.

The checking is not a formality. One example: an early version of the Question 1 page said the public records law had two carve-outs. The filed petition has three (constituent communications, policy-development records, and veterans' records). I caught it checking the page against the petition text, and fixed it. That is the kind of error the process exists to catch, and the reason drafts don't go up unread.

If using AI at all is a dealbreaker for you, that's a fair position to hold. The red book is linked on every page of this site, it's free, it's already in your mail, and it's a better primary source than any summary. Read that instead.

What gets checked, and how often

• Every question page shows a "Last verified" date: when its content was last checked against the official guide.
• Funding figures move. OCPF filings update through the fall, and the numbers here are a snapshot with a date attached, not a running total.
• Corrections are logged publicly on the updates page, with dates. Fixes aren't made quietly.

Known limits

• All nine question pages, the cheat sheet, the homepage, the About page, the language help page, the how to vote page and the updates log are translated into Spanish. The values quiz, at-a-glance view and Privacy page are English only.
• Some funding is genuinely not broken out in the filings. Where that's true the page says so instead of estimating.
• Summaries are summaries. For anything you're deciding a vote on, read the full text in the red book.
• I'm a Massachusetts voter, not a lawyer and not an election official. This site has no official standing.

Found something wrong? Email maballotguide@gmail.com with the question number and what's wrong with it. It gets checked against the official guide, fixed, and logged.