Kansas City August Primaries

In this July 10 episode of Radio Active Magazine, hosts Spencer Graves and Susan Sarachek will discuss the August 7 primaries in Kansas and Missouri with Pat Goodwin and Cheryl Barnes of the League of Women Voters of Kansas City / Jackson, Clay and Platte Counties, Missouri. Goodwin and Barnes will discuss their Voter
Guides and Public Forums.

The deadline to register to vote in the August 7 primary is July 11 in Missouri and July 17 in Kansas.  Instructions and forms for doing that are available on the web. People can register online in Kansas. In Missouri, your voter application must be postmarked or hand delivered to your local election authority by July 11. 

Pragmatically, it may be more important that you be seen to be participating in the political process than how you actually vote.  Elections are rarely won or lost by just one vote.

On the other hand, if politicians see more people actively looking for information, searching the web for information about candidates and initiatives, attending election fora and campaign rallies, and going door to door or phone banking for a particular candidate or issue, they tend to pay more attention to common concerns.  Multiple strains of research indicate that localities with lower quality local news tend to have lower voter turnout, more political corruption and a higher cost of government that geographical areas with better local news. Recent research suggest that there is a problem with “fake news”, as President Trump has suggested, but the “real fake news” may not match what he calls “fake news”.  Every media organization in the world sells changes in the behaviors of its audience to its funders, the people who pay its bills. Social media and Facebook in particular is the worst, because their business model is to segment or Balkanize the body politic to benefit elites who buy ads.  The problem is not limited to the Russians nor to Cambridge Analytica. Media organizations have this kind of impact, because all humans make too many decisions based on what comes most readily to mind.  That’s necessary for most decision but problematic for major decisions like the kind of career to pursue or what to do regarding politics.

In sum, if you are not at the table, you are on the menu.  

Sample ballots are available for jurisdictions in Kansas and Missouri.  

This discussion also mentioned the Kansas Gubernatorial Candidates’ Forum held last Saturday, July 7, in Overland Park, part of which will be broadcast tomorrow at 6-7 PM as an episode of All Souls Forum, with a video of the complete forum available via the web site of the NAACP of Johnson County, KS.

Copyright Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License.  Picture of voting in America from Creative Commons.  

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