By Jim Moore, KOIN political analyst, Pacific University professor

It’s a bit past 2:00 on election day. The West Coast polling places close in about six hour—the first counties in Indiana and Kentucky will close in about 45 minutes.

For the candidates for any office, this is the time to sit back a bit, begin to assess the election, and to think about the future. For some that future will be governing. For others that future will be considering whether a career in politics is the right choice.

While the world watches the McCain-Obama race, and part of the world watches Oregon’s U.S. Senate race between Smith and Merkley, the contests that will have the biggest impact on our lives are sort of lost in the crowd.

Local government is the source of the vast majority of decisions that have an influence on our day to day tasks. Decisions about traffic, schools, public safety, parks, and many of our taxes will be made by us—through ballot measures—or by our new representatives for state and local offices.

Here are some key races I’ll be looking at this evening:

1. Control of the Oregon House. If the Democrats can pick up 5 seats (and they have a good shot at it), they will have 36 seats—enough to pass tax measures without a direct vote of the people. This will probably be a handy tool in dealing the recession, but a tool that can quickly anger a large number of voters. There is an outside chance that the Democrats will get to 40 seats in the 60-seat chamber. They would then have quorum even if no Republicans showed up.

2. City council in Portland. Amanda Fritz is strongly favored, but whether she wins or Charles Lewis wins, there will be a brand new face with brand new ideas on the Portland City Council. This can only be a good thing. With the arrival of Nick Fish on the council earlier this year, there is a good chance that Portland’s government will refocus some of its priorities. Elections being what they are, however (i.e. it’s really hard to tell what policies candidates really favor), we’ll have to wait for the new person to see what those refocused priorities happen to be.

3. All those money measures—for the zoo, for schools, for public safety, for what have you. If there was ever a perfect storm to defeat local tax measures, the economic upheaval of the last six weeks is it. Will any of them pass? If they do, activists and governments will be carefully studying techniques for the next round of local tax measures to hit the ballot box.

4. Measure 56.This would change the double-majority requirement so that all May and November elections would be exempt from the double-majority rules. Currently, only general elections are exempt. See the previous answer for why this will be important if it passes. Just that many more opportunities for local governments to ask for money? Or that many more opportunities for money requests not to get lumped together with dozens of others on the every other year ballot?