Every autumn the Commonwealth of Massachusetts hands its citizens a small examination. This year there are nine questions. The Secretary of the Commonwealth’s guide sets them out one after another: public records, a union for public defenders, all-party primaries, Election Day registration, the tax cap, conservation money, starter homes, marijuana, guns. Eight came by initiative petition. The ninth is a referendum on a law already on the books. The examination is on Tuesday, November 3, and nobody gets to sit a practice paper.

It is a strange contest in which the state asks a schoolteacher and a line cook to rule, in a single mark, on how the revenue cap is calculated. Around each question an industry has grown up: committees, consultants, donors, advertisements made to frighten or flatter. The earlier rews guide to the nine questions laid out what is at stake. What follows is about who has done the explaining.

The desk on the South Shore

According to the Boston Globe’s Aidan Ryan, the person who broke through this season is a woman in her thirties on the South Shore named Sarah Whitman, and she was not part of that industry. She was born in Massachusetts and is an operations director at Toast, the Boston restaurant-technology company, where she has worked for ten years. In her spare time she made 18 videos about the ballot measures. Across TikTok and Instagram they have drawn nearly 1.5 million views, more than many well-funded campaigns have managed.

The production is modest. In the video on Question 3 she sits at a desk at home holding her phone. Behind her are a wooden ladder up to a loft, framed pictures on a dark green wall and a white armchair. She opens with an apology for being late.

“Sorry for not being on here yesterday, that was my plan. But this question is dense, dude!”

Then she gets to work. Massachusetts, she explains, has one of the highest shares of unenrolled, or independent, voters in the country, and many of its races are not competitive, so primaries draw fewer voters than they might. Unenrolled voters may vote in any party primary, but many do not. Supporters argue that scrapping partisan primaries would fix this, she says, and California and Washington already run their elections that way. As she talks, charts and clippings from local news appear on screen.

She also follows the money. As of August, she reports, 48 percent of the nearly $5.2 million raised by the “yes” campaign came from employees of three private equity firms. The “no” side had raised $38,000, mostly from unions, the Democratic Party and Progressive Massachusetts. The Republican Party also backs a no vote. Since then the gap has only grown. The Provincetown Independent reported this month that the yes side had reached $7.8 million, mostly from donors tied to private equity and venture capital, against $184,275 for the opposition.

“I’m not telling you how to vote, you know that. But I am telling you to vote,” she says.

Hiding in the bathroom

Whitman does not entirely understand her own success. “I don’t know why people are watching the whole thing,” she told the Globe. “I do believe that people care, and they want to be educated, but they don’t want to tell anyone that they’re not educated. So this is a really easy way for them to hide in the bathroom and watch a video on the ballot question.”

Here, perhaps, is the quiet truth about government by referendum. The citizen is told she is sovereign and then given a paragraph of statutory language. She is ashamed to admit she does not follow it, so she studies in secret, behind a locked door, the way a schoolboy reads a crib.

The platforms she uses are built, by most accounts, to reward conflict and anger. Her audience got through anyway. Zhao Peng, an assistant professor of journalism at Emerson College, speaking about news influencers in general, said their material is “easier to comprehend, especially for people who may not be familiar with the topic,” and that viewers often find their relaxed delivery “authentic” and feel closer to them.

The work is not quick. A simple video takes Whitman four to five hours, she said, and a longer one eight to 12, counting filming, editing and fact-checking. To explain Question 5, which would change how the state calculates its cap on tax revenue, she used an analogy about money in a pizza jar. For Question 7, which would lower the statewide minimum lot size for homes to 5,000 square feet, she pointed out that it would not apply to lots already smaller than that, and showed Zillow listings of houses on such lots. Search “Question 3 Massachusetts” on Instagram or TikTok and her video is near the top, alongside explainers from GBH and the Globe.

Not neutral, and saying so

She does not claim to be impartial. She began posting regularly about politics when President Trump was inaugurated in 2025. She has endorsed No Kings rallies, urged people to press their representatives to impeach Trump, and backed a challenger to Democratic Representative Bill Keating. Once she had worked through all nine measures, she posted a separate video giving her opinions on the process. “I’m not hiding my political stance at all in any way,” she said. In the explainers themselves, she said, she has tried to stay “as nonpartisan and unbiased” as she can.

Both sides of Question 3 praised her thoroughness. Neither called her flawless. She left out some arguments: the “yes” campaign’s claim that the new system could diversify the Legislature, and the “no” campaign’s reminder that similar measures were rejected in several states in 2024. In one video she said the “yes” campaign had promised more moderate candidates. The campaign says it never made that claim.

“She has been one of the great examples of someone who is able to capture attention and do a good, thorough job of explaining things,” said Jesse Littlewood, campaign manager for the Coalition for Healthy Democracy, which supports Question 3. “That said, the challenge is those creators aren’t communicating with campaigns.”

That complaint is revealing. A campaign with millions in the bank is uneasy about a citizen who explains its measure to other citizens without going through it first. For the professionals, this kind of independence counts as a problem.

Whitman put it more simply. “My husband is always like, ‘You’re a little crazy,’ “ she said. “I know I am, but I think it matters.”