The Kansas City Star, June 16
Kansas Democrats are making voting easier in their 2020 presidential primary
In next year’s presidential primary, Kansas Democrats will be test-driving a balloting process called ranked-choice voting that should increase turnout and be plain old good for our democracy.
This is how you’d run an election if you actually wanted the fullest possible participation and fairest possible representation, and we hope it catches on around the country.
This method of voting makes a “wasted” vote impossible.
Here’s how it will work: On Saturday, May 2, Democratic voters in Kansas will rank their first, second and third choices - all the way down to 24th, or however many presidential candidates are on the ballot.
If your top pick gets less than 15% of all of the first-choice votes, then those votes are redistributed to second-choice candidates, and so on, until only those candidates with 15% or more of the votes are still in the running. Delegates are awarded proportionally among these candidates, rather than in a winner-take-all system.
The Kansas Democrats are doing other things to make voting as simple as possible: They’re holding the primary on a Saturday, at voting centers across the state.
They’re allowing same-day registration and allowing 17-year-olds who will be 18 by the general election in November to vote in the primary.
State law requires voters to show a photo ID. But those registering that day will be given a federal voter registration form that does not require the same proof of citizenship - a birth certificate, for instance - that the state forms do.
So at least for now, the chaos of the Democratic caucus is a thing of the past in Kansas, and good riddance.
Now, voters who want to skip the speeches can vote, vamoose and get on with their lives.
Kansas Republicans are considering canceling their caucus altogether next year, even though President Donald Trump does have at least one primary challenger in former Massachusetts governor William Weld.
Ranked choice voting is an antidote to anti-democratic efforts to make voter registration harder, suppress the vote, overturn the clear will of the voters on ballot initiatives like Clean Missouri and like Florida’s historic recent decision to allow restore voting rights to those who’ve served time. (Now, the Sunshine State is trying to effectively nullify that vote by saying that a felon can only get his voting rights back by paying “all fines, fees and restitution” - fines so onerous that this new requirement amounts to an electoral debtor’s prison.)
The May 2 primary in Kansas comes so late in the nominating process - a full three months after the earliest contest - that it may not matter much in terms of picking the 2020 Democratic nominee. But in showing how a presidential primary could and should be run, Kansas might be doing something that’s just as important.
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The Topeka Capital-Journal, June 16
Mental health needs merit community solution
Our state has failed to provide enough funding to community mental health centers to truly meet the need for care. Individuals with the most severe, persistent mental illness are those most likely to fall into service gaps, often ending up homeless, in the corrections system, or in nursing homes.
The nursing homes charged with serving mentally ill Kansans are the focus of a recent report from the Disability Rights Center, which poses good questions about funding priorities and care in the mental health system.
On any given day, more than 500,000 people with mental illness - excluding dementia - reside in U.S. nursing homes, with over half of those individuals younger than 65, according to a Harvard Medical School study. Many experts believe these facilities, despite their best efforts, are not designed or well-equipped to meet the needs of this population.
Most experts now agree that it is more effective and saves money to treat people in living community group homes, with family members or independently. These community-based services are the best approach for most people.
However, the Disability Rights Center report points out that our funding priorities do not always reflect what we know about community-based services being the better solution. The good news is that over the past few decades, the overall percentage of mental health funding has shifted from institutional care in favor of community-based services. Unfortunately, during drops in revenue in Kansas, community-based mental health services have borne the brunt of cuts. Significant cuts to mental health spending starting in 2014 have disproportionately impacted community-based services, driving down actual dollars available to the state’s network of 26 community health centers while increasing caseloads.
At the same time, Kansas spent more or about the same on nursing home care, despite a small decrease in mentally ill Kansans placed in nursing homes.
For years, we have asked community mental health centers to serve more people with less, but there is good news from the recent legislative session. The Kansas Legislature allocated $5 million additional dollars in state aid for the coming fiscal year, an important step towards closing the gap between available dollars and need.
The Disability Rights Center report found that 69 percent of their residents surveyed wanted to leave nursing home placements in favor of the community, but for many of these residents, the community simply lacks the support they likely need to be successful. The lack of support that keeps mentally ill people trapped in living situations they did not choose or prefer is problematic.
People living with mental illness should be provided the same right to self-determination the rest of us enjoy whenever possible. Our failure as a state and a nation to provide for our most vulnerable in the community is a poor excuse for keeping people in institutions.
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The Lawrence Journal-World, June 16
USDA decision produces a win for science and Kansas City
There is nothing special about the science of Washington, D.C., a city that long ago put hot air at the top of the periodic table of elements.
People should remember that as they fret over a pending move from Washington to Kansas City of two key research divisions of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Several scientific groups, lawmakers and union bosses connected to the nation’s capital were decrying the announcement that the USDA’s Economic Research Service and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture will move to the Kansas City area this fall.
“This is a blatant attack on science and will especially hurt farmers, ranchers and eaters at a particularly vulnerable time,” The Associated Press quoted Mike Lavender, a senior manager for the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Yes, only good science can be done in Washington, D.C. That must be why there is such unanimity in Congress on global warming.
Kansas City economic development leaders, members of the Kansas and Missouri congressional delegations and, yes, the Trump administration, deserve congratulations for working to move the USDA divisions to the heart of agriculture country. You know, Trump was not wrong when he said that Washington, D.C., had become a swamp. He just is wrong about the science of cleaning it up. Invective is not the key ingredient in that formula - just as politics is not a part of the scientific process.
You can argue that politics has been one of the more destructive forces in scientific understanding in America. A cancer of political beliefs consuming proven facts is spreading across the country. But the tumor resides in Washington, D.C. Why should we believe such a city is somehow uniquely suited to be a center for objective research and scientific discovery?
Even if you don’t buy that theory, there is an argument to be made that the consolidation of all our federal agencies in Washington, D.C., increases the cost of big government. All the agencies compete for the same office space, the same workers, the same housing. Washington, D.C., has become one of the most expensive cities in the country. Maybe when the country was founded there was a great necessity for all of government’s appendages to be next to each other. But technology makes it easier than ever to communicate. Is it still efficient to locate so much of our government in such a high-cost area? Maybe part of cleaning up government involves spreading it out.
Yes, there will be some transition pains. Not all of USDA’s current employees will want to make the move to Kansas City. Some good employees will be lost. That’s a trade-off that happens with any relocation of a business or organization. But researchers will benefit by being closer to agriculture. Synergies that are only imagined in Washington will become real in Kansas City.
Of course, people in the Kansas City area don’t need much convincing that this move is a good one. The two divisions are expected to bring 550 jobs to Kansas City - exact location of the offices haven’t been announced yet - and U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri said many of the jobs would pay between $80,000 and $100,000 a year.
The moves give Kansas City a legitimate chance to position itself as the leading agricultural city in America. A corridor that stretches from Manhattan to Columbia, Mo., already is the leader in the animal sciences industry, with about 300 such firms located in the region. Being the ag capital of America may not be as flashy as Silicon Valley’s status as the tech capital, but agriculture is an extremely solid business. Eating is not a fad.
Communities across the region, including Lawrence, should work together to build upon this growing synergy. The University of Kansas’ pharmacy school, for example, does a lot of research that also can be useful to the animal sciences field.
In fact, there are a tremendous number of high-tech and scientific opportunities with the agriculture industry. Figuring out how to feed a growing world population will take lots of science.
For all the Washington, D.C., worry-warts, rest assured, we understand science here. If you don’t believe us, we have proof. It shows up on your dinner plate every day.
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