Rav Casley Gera

What with all the fuss about the election for the office of what law blogs call POTUS, it’s easy to forget that today is also the day, not only of hundreds of US Senate and House of Representative races, but thousands more elections to state legislatures and of hundreds of elected judges, sheriffs and city commissioners across America. The world’s largest developed country really is an experiment in local democracy.

And, of course, there are hundreds of state and city referenda on particular issues. These vary from the vastly important to the - well, less so. This list of LA Times endorsements gives you the idea. You probably know about Proposition 8, the measure to amend California’s constitution to ban gay marriage (LA Times says: “No”). But what about Prop 5, introducing new drug rehabilitation agencies (LA Times: also “no”)? Or Prop 2, on the size of battery-hen cages (also, interestingly, “no”)?

The Guardian sums up some of the other, wackier, ballots out there. As well as waking up tomorrow in a world with a black US President-elect, we may be in a world where Colorado’s state constitution defines life as beginning at birth. I look forward to reading the coroner’s reports on the thousands of miscarriages that must take place in Colorado every year…