Where do you stand on ballot questions?

A spot on the November 2024 state ballot remains in play for the most closely-watched initiative petitions, including the removal of the MCAS test as a graduation requirement, allowing the auditor to scrutinize the workings of the state Legislature, and the decriminalization of psychedelic substances such as psilocybin mushrooms.

Others receiving legal muster have also gained substantial exposure. Among them, establishing the rights and benefits for drivers on app-based platforms, reviving rent control, requiring voter identification, and suspending the state’s gas tax when prices cross a certain threshold.

Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s office certified most of the 42 potential ballot questions that had been filed by the August deadline — 38 that could land on the November 2024 ballot and four constitutional amendments that could be decided in the 2026 election.

Thirty-four proposals — in some cases representing multiple versions of the same question — were certified, along with seven that didn’t make the cut, and one that was withdrawn by its sponsor.

Certification of a proposed question that would establish a state law explicitly permitting the auditor’s office to examine the Legislature represents the less contentious part of Diana DiZoglio’s two-pronged effort to remove the veil of secrecy that body has enjoyed.

In July, DiZoglio asked Campbell for permission to take the House and Senate to court in an effort to get the two branches to open up their finances and divulge details on active and pending legislation, processes for appointing committees, adoption and suspension of rules, and policies and procedures of the Massachusetts General Court.

While no decision on that petition has been announced, the request has put the attorney general in a politically awkward position, since it’s uncommon for an agency of government to take legal action against another.

Campbell addressed that conundrum a month later on GBH’s Boston Public Radio: “I just want to stress that this is rare that you have one part of government wanting to sue another or vice versa depending on how this unfolds.”

DiZoglio, a Methuen Democrat and former member of both the House and Senate, has been pushing for months to attain that ability.

Top Democrats have resisted, arguing she does not have the authority, and that doing so would violate the “separation of powers” required by the state Constitution.

We suspect DiZoglio won’t get all she wants, and will have to settle for securing a question on the ballot.

Two potential questions that would remove the MCAS exam as a highschool graduation requirement also got the green light.

The state’s largest teacher’s union is behind a ballot measure that would eliminate the graduation requirement associated with MCAS, and another that would create a “debt free college scholarship program,” proposals so extreme that even the

Democratic-dominated Legislature won’t touch them.

The Massachusetts Teachers Association has called the MCAS test a “punitive, high-stakes, rank-andshame accountability system.”

The MTA has long opposed the exams, created in a 1993 education reform law aimed at improving accountability and school performance, which it succeeded in doing. It has propelled Massachusetts students to the head of the class in virtually every national education metric.

We’d support changes to the MCAS where needed, but not its elimination as a graduation requirement.

In addition to a pair of bills filed by lawmakers to decriminalize certain psychedelic substances, a national drug policy group also insists that it’s time for this state to reconsider its stance.

A group calling itself Massachusetts for Mental Health Options Committee filed paperwork with state campaign finance regulators to pursue a ballot question that could decriminalize psychedelics.

A potential referendum question would focus on “creating access to natural psychedelic medicine therapy and removing criminal penalties for personal possession of these medicines.”

Given the time and study it took to legalize medical and then recreational marijuana, this initiative appears ahead of its time.