Last night’s mid-term election saw a rising wave of red across our country, with Republicans taking control of the U.S. Senate and winning a surprising number of gubernatorial, U.S. House, and state legislative seats. It was the second wave election in four years, and it cements Republican power throughout most of the nation.

Election Day is finally here, after months of debates, campaigning, and political ads by competing parties. Participation in the electoral process is an important responsibility that we all have in a civil society, and it has special urgency for those of us who have taken up the cause of the voiceless and voteless. Until animal advocates make elections a priority, we will never reach our high water mark when it comes to the reforms we're seeking.

I’ve been involved in dozens of political campaigns around the country over two decades, and the brazen lies and scare tactics used by state officials working in collusion with the bear baiting, hounding, and trapping crowd in Maine are among the worst I’ve ever seen.

We’re just days from the November 4th election, and there are critical races for humane candidates and animal protection issues all over the country. I want to provide a rundown of several key updates as we enter the final stretch.

The opponents of fair bear hunting in Maine are taking outrageous liberties with their misleading campaign rhetoric. One of their constant refrains is that Question 1—which would ban the cruel and unsporting hounding, trapping, and baiting of bears in the last state to allow all three extreme methods—is largely funded by out-of-state groups, including The HSUS and HSLF. Never mind that those groups have tens of thousands of members who are Maine residents, and who want to rid their state of this terrible cruelty.

Whenever we’ve confronted terrible cruelty, there’s always been a fierce effort to defend it. I think of tough fights in Louisiana to ban cockfighting, in California on Prop 2 and extreme confinement, and on bear baying in South Carolina.

Seldom do we see unanimous support for reform. There are always opinion leaders who don’t accept the real meaning of animal protection, or others who excuse cruelty or think it’s too much, too fast.

As we approach the end of the 113th Congress (which spans 2013-2014), HSLF is posting a preview of our 2014 Humane Scorecard. I hope you will check it out and see how your U.S. senators and U.S. representatives have performed so far in this Congress on animal protection issues.

Way out in the central Pacific, there’s a swath of ocean twice the size of Texas where millions of marine animals now have safe haven from commercial killing, entanglement in fishing lines, and other human-caused dangers.

In a late-night, nail-biting vote yesterday, the Missouri House of Representatives failed to override Gov. Jay Nixon’s veto of a bill that would’ve relaxed restrictions on captive deer farms. Language in the bill reclassified captive deer as “livestock” rather than “wildlife.” The Senate had voted to override the veto, and the House failed by just one vote to get the two-thirds majority needed.