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Most of the civilized world has come to regard killing someone held in captivity as barbaric. The death penalty has been abolished in the European Union and 19 U.S. states. Governors in four states that do permit capital punishment — Colorado, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Washington — have imposed a moratorium on executions.

The rest of America is getting there. For the first time in almost 50 years, less than half the public supports the death penalty, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Even states that still put inmates to death seem to be losing the stomach for it. The United States is set to carry out fewer executions this year than it has since the early '90s.

This November, voters in two very different places, Nebraska and California, will have an opportunity to remove state-sanctioned killing from their books. (Going the other way, a referendum in Oklahoma calls for amending the state constitution to protect the use of the death penalty.)