Next week millions of people will go to the polls and will vote for their various representatives. During this volatile election year, people are often torn about who they should vote for, and why. People vote based upon a number of different issues, including how their representatives vote on animal rights issues.
Why get involved in advocacy issues that may be deemed “political”?
The short answer is that all advocacy issues are political, because they require laws to be passed by those politicians who are currently in office.
Hanaeleh was created out of an advocacy position to end horse slaughter in the United States, but we also support a number of different equine advocacy issues, including trying to end soring, prevent the cruelty that occurs in horse racing, and stop the BLM roundups. Although we are a small rescue, we do what we can to educate the public about these various issues in an effort to help stop abuse of horses at a larger scale.
Why don’t you just focus on rescuing horses?
The goal of Hanaeleh is not to just help the few horses we can, but to help as many horses as we can. We are a very small, grassroots rescue that only exists because of the kindness of our donors. We have no government or large corporate sponsors. This means that the amount of horses we can physically help are relatively few.
We do our best to help those horses we can given our resources, but we also understand that there is a larger picture than just our little rescue. Part of our mission is to help educate the public about advocacy issues in order to help pass laws that would stop the abuses that affect horses across the entire country.
Who should I vote for?
Now that we can’t tell you. As noted above, there are a number of different reasons you might vote for a candidate; his or her record on animal rights is just one. Last week we posted a link to the Humane Scorecard, which essentially shows the animal advocacy bills each senator and representative across the United States voted on or co-sponsored.
As we are located in California, we pulled the voting record for EVERY California representative and listed whether they supported equine advocacy bills, including the SAFE Act (end horse slaughter), PAST Act (end soring), Horse Racing Integrity Act (stop doping), and the Interior Appropriations bill (preventing BLM Mustangs from going to slaughter).
The voting record for each of the California representatives is listed below, and you may also see some of them listed on our other social media sites. If you’re not in California, please do click on the link to the Humane Scorecard to see how your representative votes on animal advocacy issues. What you do with that information, ultimately, is up to you.
Again, we’re not telling you how to vote. We’re just telling you how they voted.