Just as a heads-up to interested folks. (No, I haven’t gotten to work yet. Surprise!)

First of all, they’re still counting provisional/absentee/early/etc. votes, so the result is not official. However, it’s highly likely that the measure will pass.

But, its passage in the election isn’t the end. Lawsuits have already been filed. Short form, as I understand it, is that same-sex marriages were recognized in California because the CA Supreme Court ruled that opposing them was unconstitutional. Amending the constitution, according to more educated opinions than mine, doesn’t remove the conflict with Article I. So on legal grounds, the amendment itself may be struck down as unconstitutional. Getting around that would require revising the original text of the constitution, which is much harder to do.

Moreover, as that link points out, the CA justices said back when they made their decision that there were two ways to solve this problem. The easier one was to legalize same-sex marriage. The much, much harder one was to say, “to hell with this; civil unions for everybody, gay or straight.” Which in some ways I’m in favor of: I don’t think what the government says about a relationship and what a given religion says about it should have anything to do with one another. If we could actually push through a terminology change that would recognize the difference, I’d be in favor of it. But (as noted in the comments to that post) this creates a massive inter-state problem, since civil unions are not simply marriage by another name, not under the variety of state laws the U.S. has. So this may be more of a nuclear option than anything else: do all the people who voted for Prop 8 really want to go down that road?

Let’s be pessimistic, though, and say the amendment stands, and the legal fight continues. This analysis lays out the basics of how it would fare in the U.S. Supreme Court. Short form of that one is, this could be the queen sacrifice (no pun intended <g>) that wins the chess game. There’s a strong body of federal law and precedent and so on that can be mobilized to support gay marriage rights, and a Supreme Court decision in that direction would address this question in all fifty states at once. And while we may be worried about conservative justices, conservative or not, they have to respect the implications of the law. kittenrae suggests those implications would, in the end, be in favor of acceptance.

So: while the proposition will likely pass, the results may not be as bad as you fear. And the fallout from here will be interesting to watch.

(Links by way of zellandyne.)

There are a lot of things to say about last night. Some of them I’ll have to wait on, since I want actual statistics to discuss, rather than exit polls (which are a statistical mess).

But a few scattered thoughts:

I’m glad Jon Stewart was the one to tell me. ^_^ (We were watching Comedy Central’s hour-long coverage special at the time.)

McCain supporters at the concession speech: not cool. Speech good, but I wish he had been a little more energetic in quieting the boos.

Part of me wishes I were still in Indiana, not only so I could be part of flipping that state blue — seriously, the results aren’t finalized, but it looks like it happened! — but so I would have had a real possibility of hopping in the car and driving to Chicago. Because a part of me really wishes I could have been there in Grant Park.

Sadly, my being in California does not appear to have made a difference in Prop 8. But there are already legal battles being prepared; we’ll get rid of that thing, and I hope sooner rather than later.

As moving as the headlines from around the country are, what get me more are the international reactions. Very nearly the entire world was rooting for Obama. And while he’s going to have a four-year uphill battle, trying to fix the many things that have gone wrong, the simple fact of his election is enough to make many nations look more kindly upon us. That alone is worth the weight of the White House in gold.

Now? The real work begins.

I am perversely disappointed that I did not have to wait in line to vote. ^_^

(It’s the advantage of being free to wander in at 10 a.m. Sadly, it is also the advantage of living in an affluent area. That latter point is one that really needs fixing; being poor has enough problems, without also meaning you have to stand in line for six hours due to insufficient voting equipment.)

In a few hours, the polls on the East Coast will open for the 2008 United States election.

You may be tempted to stay home because you believe your candidate’s victory is a foregone conclusion, or because you believe his defeat is. Or because you look at the scale of a presidential election and conclude your vote does not matter. And the further west you live — as I’m realizing, now that I’m in California — the stronger that temptation becomes.

Get out there and vote anyway.

Vote because this is your first chance to elect someone other than a white man into the White House. Or if that isn’t your cup of tea, try one of these.

Vote because you can keep a good representative or senator in office, or dump a bad one.

Vote because you can do the same for governors, state legislators, mayors, judges, town councilmen, and dozens of other local officials.

Vote because you can change the laws of your state, county, or city.

Vote because you can.

One vote alone will probably not decide the next President of the United States. But we’re more than just our head; all the rest of the body matters, too. And you can always make a difference there.

Vote even if they call the race when the East Coast polls close. Even if you have to stand in line. Be a part of this.

This article on Rwanda’s government is kind of awesome. (Go to Bug Me Not for a login to use on the WaPo site.)

Short form: 56% of Rwanda’s parliament, including the Speaker, is female, making them the only majority-women government in the world. They’re systematically dismantling the laws that hold women down, encouraging them to move into the common workforce, and making an organized effort toward community-building throughout Rwanda.

The pessimist in me — which might also be the realist in me — says it can’t last. They’re not exactly surrounded by stable governments, and I’m sure there are tensions and conflicts within Rwandan society that might break them apart from within before these changes can become habit. It’s also not cheerful news when you figure that the reason Rwandan women can do this is that they made up 70% of the population after the genocide. But for all of that: dude. Women are now 55% of Rwandan society, and 56% of its parliament. How many countries in the world can claim such equality of representation?

Only Rwanda. Out of curiosity, I looked up figures on the United States Congress. 17% of the House is female, and 16% of the Senate. (A little more than 19% for the British House of Commons.) Not so great for us — especially when you figure that we still haven’t managed a female president or vice-president, and only one and two substantial candidates for those positions, respectively.

(If there’s one thing I regret about this election season, it’s that the Democratic party had to choose between the African-American candidate and the female one.)

(Then again, if there’s one thing I love about this election season, it’s that the Democratic party got to choose between the African-American candidate and the female one. <g>)

Anyway. Go Rwanda. Go Kagame, for pushing a vision of equality and harmony. I wish them all the good fortune in the world, and hope America can aspire to do half so well.

I’m randomly on Wikipedia, reading the entry on the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and it’s sparking some interesting thoughts.

I suspect Americans have a hard time grokking the UK system of government because to us, it looks kind of haphazard. The government of the United States was designed; if you sit down with the Constitution and read the first three or four Articles, you know more or less how we work. The UK Constitution isn’t even a document; it’s a collection of documents and conventions and general force of habit, accumulated over the centuries. You could graphically represent the difference by putting maps of Washington, D.C. and central London next to each other. One of these was planned; the other happened by accident.

So you can’t easily say who the first Prime Minister was, because nobody ever sat down and created the office. Walpole kind of was, in terms of the power he held, but people fought about the term for over a hundred years, and apparently no two lists of PMs are alike, because the criteria for inclusion vary. It’s interesting to me, though, that the office grew out of the Treasury. I suspect — and this is probably me re-inventing the wheel of some Marxist branch of historical study — that you can view the growth of modern democracy as a process wherein the root of political power shifted from control of armed force to the control of money. (And there’s probably an interesting comparison in there somewhere, between the West and Third World military dictatorships. I’m beginning to feel like I ought to have majored in history after all.)

It makes me realize, too — given the season we’re in right now, over here in the U.S. — how amazingly stable our government has been. I don’t hold with whatever dude it is who declared that history’s over, that we’ve arrived at the final, triumphant form of government; democracy on this scale is still the new kid on the political block, and might not have as much staying power as that guy thinks. There are dynasties that lasted longer than the United States of America. But when I compare the succession of U.S. presidents with that of monarchies or Prime Ministers, it’s kind of impressively . . . boring. In a good way. The biggest weirdnesses we have are: FDR with his four terms; Grover Cleveland with his non-consecutive terms; a small handful of male relatives who occupied the same office. A couple of assassinations and deaths in office, whereupon their successors picked up and kept going. And the Civil War, but even then, all that happened politically was that part of the country seceded and formed its own country. I don’t think we’ve ever had, say, two rival Presidents running around, both claiming their Cabinet and Congress are the real ones. Or anything to even approach the Wars of the Roses.

(Yes, most of my comparisons are to British history. For obvious reasons. But I’ve studied other countries, too.)

(Okay, my brain just offered up Emperor Norton. Who is entertaining, but not exactly mainstream American history.)

So, yeah. As contentious as our elections have been lately, and as freaked out as some people are by the possibility of a black man* leading our country, on the whole? We still have an awfully rational and stable thing going on over here.

I have other, unrelated political thoughts to post, but it occurs to me that if I put them here, one half of the post or the other will probably get all the attention in the comments, so I’ll save it for a separate entry later on.

*By which we signify a half-Kenyan black, half-Kansas white guy born in Hawaii and raised partly in Indonesia. Don’t you love how modern American society still boils everything down to one-word reductionist evaluations of skin shade?