i know all eyes are on the presidential candidates for this election, and rightfully so, but some very wonderful and important things are happening statewide that should be celebrated and highlighted, so here’s a few:

• Florida passed Amendment 2, which will raise minimum wage to $15/hour by 2026
• South Dakota, Montana, Arizona and New Jersey all passed an amendment that legalized marijuana 
• Utah will now be removing gendered language in the Utah Constitution and will replace it with gender-neutral language
• California passed Prop 17, which restores voting rights to previously imprisoned citizens
• Delaware elected Sarah McBride, the first ever openly trans state senator
• Ritchie Torres and Mondaire Jones are the first ever openly gay black members of congress
• Cori Bush is the first ever woman of color to win a seat in Congress in Missouri
• Mauree Turner became the first non-binary state lawmaker in America and the first Muslim member of the Oklahoma state house
• Oregon has become the first state to decriminalize all drugs (small amounts of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and other drugs will have lesser punishments, similar to traffic tickets, and no jail time.)
• Kim Jackson is the first out LGBTQ+ state senator in Georgia

UPDATED WITH MORE GOOD NEWS:

• Shevrin D. Jones is Florida’s first opnely LGBTQ+ state senator
• Jabari Brisport became New York’s first gay Black member of the house
• Arizona flipped blue for the first time in 24 years
• Michele Rayner-Goolsby became the first Black LGBTQ woman in the Florida Legislature
• Voters in Colorado overwhelmingly rejected Prop 115, a state ballot measure that would have banned abortions after a fetus reaches 22 weeks gestational age. In rejecting the initiative, Colorado remains one of the most progressive states in the country on reproductive rights
• Arizona will now send two Democrats to the Senate for the first time since 1951, thanks to the win of ex-astronaut Captain Mark Kelly.
• Democrats have flipped the senate seat in Colorado, with the win of former Gov. John Hickenlooper
• Mississippi is removing the confederate flag from their symbology
• Marie Newman, who has been titled ‘a leader of the pro-choice movement’, will now represent Illinois’ 3rd Congressional District in Congress
• Nevada became the first state to protect same-sex marriage in it’s constitution
• Immigrant rights activist and former public defender José Garza won the race for District Attorney of Travis County, Texas
• Michigan passed Proposal 20-2, which requires police to have a search warrant to access a person’s electronic data and electronic communications.

EVEN MORE UPDATES:

• Washington approved Referendum 90, which requires all school districts to provide age appropriate, comprehensive sex ed at all grade levels
• Colorado passed the first paid family/ medical leave program
• Mississippi passed an ammendment that legalized medical marijuana
• Denver overwhelmingly voted to pass Ballot Measure 2J. which lifts the city’s more than 30-year-old ban on pit bulls
• New Mexico elected all women of color to it’s House delegation
• Vermont elected the state’s first openly transgender legislator, Taylor Small
• Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley, all won re-election in the House
• Nebraska passed a constitutional amendment to the state constitution that closes the loophole of the U.S. Constitution’s 13th Amendment that allowed slavery as a punishment for crimes
• Rhode Island passed a measure to rename the state, officially naming it Rhode Island and not The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, due to connections to slavery
• Oregon passed measure 109, the first state to legalize psilocybin (mushrooms) for mental heath treatments
• Hawai’i elected native Hawaiian Kaiali’i “Kai” Kahele, a Democrat, to the House of Representatives. He is one of 6 Native members of the House who will be sworn in in January
• Utah passed legislation that removes language from the state constitution that allows the use of slavery and involuntary servitude as criminal punishments (no more prison labor!)
• Multnomah county, where most of Portland sits, just voted for tuition-free preschool for everybody ages 4-5