Washington State’s Initiative 502, which would legalize, regulate and tax marijuana, is currently leading in the polls. According to polling by PPP 47 percent of Washington voters say they plan to vote for it compared to just 39 percent who say they plan to vote against it. But success will depend on which groups turn out to vote.

Mike McGinn, the Mayor of Seattle, Washington, used his city address yesterday to repeat his call for the legalization of marijuana in his state, setting a model for other public figures to follow. McGinn’s very public call for marijuana legalization is especially important now, because this November the voters of Washington state will get to decide on I-502. If approved, this ballot initiative would legalize, tax and regulate marijuana in Washington for adults over the age of 21.

Gallup has published its 2012 list of the top ten states with the most liberals in the country. To a strong degree this same list can be used as a stand in for the list of states most likely to support marijuana legalization. And success will likely come in those states that allow voter initiatives on the ballot.

A new poll found that 62 percent of likely California voters would support a ballot initiative to regulate marijuana like wine. This is the highest level of support I’ve seen in any poll of California about the issue of marijuana legalization.

During last night’s “Your Interview with the President” event sponsored by Google+, President Obama and Google completely and shamefully ignored the dominant questions — about marijuana — submitted by the American people. Questions about marijuana policy reform dominated almost all of the top “most popular question” slots, but Obama ignored them.

So far every attempt by Obama to directly reach out to young voters through some form of online question and answer system has resulted in young adults overwhelming voting to confront the President with questions about our government’s marijuana policies. It happened with his transitional website Change.gov, his first Youtube townhall and with the White House’s new “we the people” petition site. Now it’s happened again.

This November the voters of Washington state will likely have a chance to vote to legalize marijuana in the state. The marijuana legalization initiative, I-502, has been certified by the Secretary of State’s office. It was determined that New Approach Washington, the campaign behind the initiative, had turned in enough valid signatures for the initiative to advance.

Andrew Sullivan is still trying to defend his absurd claim that Obama somehow deserves credit for growing support for marijuana legalization. In fact, though, while the decades long trend towards greater support for marijuana legalization hasn’t stopped since Obama took office, it has continued despite the Obama Administration’s overt opposition.

The Liberal Party of Canada, the country’s oldest federally registered party, has endorsed a resolution calling for the legalization and regulation of marijuana in Canada. This would be roughly equivalent in the US to the Democratic national convention adopting a non-binding resolution in favor of marijuana legalization.

Today the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol is turning in nearly 160,000 signatures to the Colorado Secretary of State office to get their marijuana legalization initiative on the November ballot. That is nearly twice the 85,853 valid signatures required by state law to get an initiative put on the ballot.