Texas isn't the only 'whole other country' in the U.S.

In Texas, you can buy vehicle license plates that proudly proclaim the state to be "like a whole other country."

Is it? By the vote totals in Tuesday's election, you might think so.

To start with, Texans disagreed with the majority of U.S. voters, who picked Democrat Barack Obama over Republican Mitt Romney for president. Obama won a second term by a narrow national margin, but he lost big in the "whole other country" state, where Romney took 57 percent of the vote.

Texas elected a Republican, Ted Cruz, to the U.S. Senate while the nation as a whole added two senators to the Democratic majority in that body. Cruz, like Romney, won 57 percent of the vote

Neither of those race results was a surprise. Democrats haven't won a statewide election in Texas since 1994, their party's longest losing streak anywhere in the nation. The U.S. has picked Democrats in three of the five presidential elections since then.

Hawaii is considered the bluest state in the nation. Obama's home state gave him 70 percent of its votes on Tuesday. Compared with the U.S. as a whole, Hawaii also might be "a whole other country."

Other states proved themselves separate from Texas in other ways on Tuesday. Maryland, Maine and Washington state voted in favor of gay marriage, and voters in Minnesota rejected a state constitutional amendment that would have defined marriage as between a man and a woman. Gays now can wed legally in nine states and the District of Columbia.

In Texas, voters approved a state constitutional amendment in 2005 defining marriage as between one man and one woman. The vote margin was 76 percent for the amendment, 24 percent against, according to records on the secretary of state's website.

In the decided-but-still-unsettled category from Tuesday's election come ballot propositions in Colorado and Washington in which voters opted to legalize the recreational use of marijuana. Texas has never had such an election, and don't hold your breath until it does.

What makes those votes unsettled is the uncomfortable fact that marijuana is still classified as a controlled substance under federal law. The U.S. could take court action to rein in the just-passed marijuana freedom laws.

That hasn't stopped some people in Colorado from speculating about the prospects for "marijuana tourism," particularly for out-of-state visitors to ski resorts.

A spokeswoman for the state's resort association told The Associated Press that most were "waiting for the smoke to clear."

Still, it's not like marijuana would be a new thing on the Colorado ski slopes. The AP reported that the resort town of Breckenridge dropped criminal penalties for marijuana two years ago.

In Texas, possession of less than two ounces of marijuana is a Class B misdemeanor, with punishment that can range up to 180 days in jail and a fine of up to $2,000.

It's safe to say that Texans have always walked their own path. Texas is different from many other parts of the United States. It might even be "a whole other country."

But Texas isn't completely an outlier. After all, 23 other states also went for Romney on Tuesday. That leaves 26 and the District of Columbia for Obama.

It's close enough to say that we're all in this together.

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