What is a ballot?

The fate of 16,000 housing units in Cambridge--more than a third of the city's housing stock--may hang on this question.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) will attempt to resolve the growing legal fight in the next two weeks. Associate Justice Herbert P. Wilkins announced Tuesday that the five-member court on December 19 will review a lawsuit challenging the voting procedures of last month's state referenda.

While the Senate passed two petitions from Boston and Cambridge Tuesday asking to spread out the abolition of rent control over five years, a veto from Gov. William F. Weld '66 is imminent.

For tenant activists, a favorable ruling from the SJC may be the last hope for saving rent control.

Four voters are suing Secretary of State Michael J. Connolly, who conducted the ballot question vote in the November 8 election. They have charged Connolly with violating the state constitution by failing to provide summaries in voting booths of the nine lengthy initiatives.

No one disputes that Article 48 of the Massachusetts Constitution requires that ballot question summaries be printed on the ballot.

Both sides agree that the state legislature passed a law in August permitting Connolly to print separate paper summaries for distribution at polling sites throughout the state.

What is at issue is whether the August law--Chapter 129--violates the constitution, and exactly what constitutes a ballot.

Legal Dispute

"The question is, 'What is a ballot per se?'" state Rep. John E. McDonough (D-Jamaica Plain) said in an interview last Friday. "This is new legal terrain, not just for Massachusetts but, as far as we know, for any state."

"The statute would define something handed to you as a ballot," McDonough said, offering his interpretation of the issue.

The plaintiffs, who are seeking to throw out the results of the nine initiatives, disagree. They brought their suit against Connolly to Suffolk County Superior Court last week.

"Some voters were literally trapped in the voting booths, since they had already closed the curtain, and were forced to vote on questions about which they were confused and on which they had no substantive information in front of them," Ruth A. Bourquin and Burton A. Nadler, the plaintiffs' attorneys, wrote in a memo to Judge Hiller B. Zobel '53.

Zobel agreed. After hearing oral arguments from Bourquin, Nadler and Assistant Attorney General Peter Sacks--who is representing Connolly--the judge granted a 10-day restraining order November 29, barring certification of five of the nine ballot questions.

Among the five was Question 9, the ballot initiative to eliminate rent control in Boston, Brookline and Cambridge, effective January 1.