Politicians don’t need to suppress Kansas City votes. We do it pretty well ourselves | Opinion

As Republicans across the country push and pass voter suppression measures, the reality is that registered voters in the Kansas City area suppress themselves simply by not voting.

In fact, local voter turnout numbers are appalling.

Will that be the case again on April 4 when Kansas City, Jackson and Clay counties and a few area municipalities hold elections? It doesn’t have to be. Although it’s now too late to register to vote on April 4, those already registered have several options to help them know who and what is on the ballot. They include local news media, the League of Women Voters, Ballotpedia, the Kansas City Board of Election Commissioners, other area election boards and the campaigns themselves. The Star’s voter guide, which includes extensive City Council candidate questionnaires, is an excellent place to start.

How low is voter turnout here? It’s shameful. For example, in the April 2022 elections to choose school board members in several area districts and fill a slot on the Metropolitan Community College board, just 7.04% of registered voters showed up. That looks like a typographical error for 70.4% (which itself should be an unacceptably low number), but it’s really 7.04%.

The election was about educating our children, but more than 9 out of 10 registered voters simply didn’t vote then, even though from the nation’s beginning people have died defending our right to vote.

What about the commonly expressed idea that it’s understandable when few people vote in elections that aren’t national in nature, don’t concern some major issue? That’s an excuse without merit. The local turnout even for so-called important elections is appalling, too. For instance, the Kansas City Board of Election Commissioners reports that for the 2022 midterm elections last November, only 38.47% of those registered voted.

Yes, local voters did better in 2020 when there was a presidential race — but even then, just 60.53% of Kansas City voters cast a ballot.

Sometimes Kansas voters do better at showing up, but even there the numbers are low. Figures kept by the office of the Kansas Secretary of State show that only 34.2% of registered voters cast ballots in the 2020 primary, though that more than doubled to 70.9% in the general election that year. Still, that means almost 3 out of 10 registered voters failed to do their civic duty.

One reason for such disappointing numbers may be that efforts to educate the local electorate fall short of what could and should be done. In fact, there is much to learn about this from Oregon.

There, the secretary of state’s office produces for each election a nonpartisan voter guide as well as election manuals and tutorials. And that material is widely distributed.

Does that make a difference? Well, instead of 38.47% of registered voters in Kansas City voting in the 2022 midterm election, 66.9% percent of Oregon voters cast ballots then. But, of course, even that means that one-third of registered voters failed to cast ballots in that election. So the no-show problem isn’t just a Kansas City thing.

At the base of all of this is the question of whether schoolchildren are taught civics to help them understand how government works and what responsibilities they have as citizens. The National Education Association says that until the 1960s, it was common for public high school students to have three courses in civics and government, but those have been severely cut back due to an increased emphasis on core subjects tied to standardized testing. Beyond that, a study by the Brown Center for Education Policy at the Brookings Institution says many remaining social studies classes are just book learning with little active civic engagement by students.

Rep. Emanuel Cleaver is so concerned about this that he has introduced what he calls the Civics Learning Act of 2023. While we aren’t endorsing this specific legislation, there’s no question this is a conversation we need to have to ensure the future strength of our democracy.

Whatever the causes of voter apathy, one result is government many people deride as untrustworthy and ineffective. And that’s government no one can afford.