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One of the core objectives we have at the HSLF is to make it simple and efficient for voters to determine how federal lawmakers have sided on crucial animal protection legislation across a range of issues. With the end of the first term of the 114th Congress approaching, HSLF has posted a preview version of the 2015 Humane Scorecard, so you can see how your U.S. senators and U.S. representatives have performed so far in this Congress on animal protection issues.

The Humane Society Legislative Fund today began airing a new TV ad in Louisiana, urging voters in the state to support Republican U.S. Sen. David Vitter in the competitive gubernatorial race. You can watch the TV ad here.

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.

When advocating for the enactment of humane laws, we're sometimes reminded that getting a bill passed by the legislature and signed by the governor means we are “up at halftime going into the locker room.” Before we can have confidence that a new law will have impact, we often have to defend against legal challenges and ensure that it is properly enforced. We rely on all sorts of law enforcement personnel to do this work. But often a key second-half player is the state’s chief law enforcement officer—the attorney general.

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.

On February 18, 1958, then-Senator John F. Kennedy told an audience of Loyola College alumni in Baltimore that we should “not seek the Republican answer or the Democrat answer but the right answer.”

Today, 56 years later and just 26 days shy of a crucial election, we at the Humane Society Legislative Fund are also after the right answers. The right answers for animals are the lawmakers who will fight animal cruelty and abuse, and stand up for the values of kindness and compassion.

Just in time for early voting to begin in the Maryland primary election, we are pleased to release the Maryland Humane Scorecard, a joint project of the Humane Society Legislative Fund and our good friends at Maryland Votes for Animals.