This November, Californians will have an opportunity to vote on whether to allow sports betting, and if so, what form it will take. Proposition 26 would permit betting only at tribal casinos and the state’s four main horseracing tracks: Golden Gate, Santa Anita, Los Alamitos, and Del Mar. This measure would give the racing industry a massive state subsidy. And because that subsidy would be constitutionally tied to holding horse races, Prop 26 would have the effect of indefinitely locking in an industry that abuses and kills sentient beings as a matter of course.

Since 2014, Horseracing Wrongs has documented 8,960 industry kills (865 in California alone). We estimate, however, that over 2,000 horses are dying at U.S. tracks every year. Cardiac arrest. Pulmonary hemorrhage. Blunt-force head trauma. Broken necks. Severed spines. Ruptured ligaments. Shattered legs. Over 2,000 – or about six a day. And when not dying at the track, they’re dying at the abattoir: Two independent studies indicate that most – multiple thousands annually – spent or simply no-longer-wanted racehorses are bled-out and butchered at “career’s” end. In short, the American horseracing industry is engaged in wholesale carnage. Carnage.

But the killing is but a part of the story. There is, too, the everyday cruelty:

– Would-be racehorses are forever torn from their mothers and herds as mere babies. Sold, usually, at the tender age of one; broken, an industry term meaning to be made pliant and submissive; alone and terrified, their servitude begins.

– The typical horse does not reach full musculoskeletal maturity till the age of six. The typical racehorse is thrust into intensive training at 18 months, and raced at two. On the maturation chart, a 2-year-old horse is the rough equivalent of a 6-year-old child. In the necropsies, we see time and again 4-, 3-, even 2-year-old horses dying with chronic conditions like osteoarthritis and degenerative joint disease – clear evidence of the incessant pounding these pubescent bodies are forced to absorb.

– In perhaps the worst of it, racehorses are kept locked – alone – in tiny 12×12 stalls for over 23 hours a day, making a mockery of the industry claim that “horses are born to run,” and a cruelty all the worse for being inflicted on innately social animals like horses. Prominent equine vet Dr. Kraig Kulikowski likens this cruelty to keeping a child locked in a 4×4 closet for over 23 hours a day. Relatedly, practically all the horse’s natural instincts and desires are thwarted, creating an emotional and mental suffering that is brought home with crystal clarity in the stereotypies commonly seen in confined racehorses: wind-sucking, bobbing, weaving, kicking, even self-mutilation.

– Racehorses are controlled and subjugated through, among other means, cribbing collars, nose chains, lip chains, tongue ties, eye blinders, mouth “bits” – which, says Dr. Robert Cook, an expert on equine physiology, make racehorses feel like they are suffocating – and, of course, whips. On that, the public flogging administered to racehorses would land a person in jail if done to his dog in the park. But at the track, it’s part of the tradition.

– By law, racehorses are chattel – pieces of property to be bought, sold, traded, and dumped whenever and however their people decide. In fact, the average racehorse will change hands multiple times, adding anxiety and stress to an already anxious, stressful existence. This inconstancy is also a primary reason why over 90% of active racehorses suffer from ulcers.

The choice, then, is quite simple: If you believe that, like dogracing – which is prohibited on moral grounds in 42 states, including California – horseracing is but animal cruelty masquerading as entertainment, then please reject this lifeline being gifted to the industry. Vote no on Proposition 26. Thank you.

(Note: There is another ballot measure, Prop 27, that would also legalize sports betting – but this one would not subsidize the abuse and killing of horses. But it does encourage and endorse more online gambling, which includes horses)