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With the vote virtually tied with 99 percent returns, Hillary Clinton is holding the slimmest of leads in Missouri--by about 1,500 votes out of almost 620,000 votes statewide. This is a huge win for Clinton (if it holds), especially in a state with an enormous college population, including the University of Missouri system with over 77,000 students. Sanders usually thrives in these settings, and he took Boone County, where the Columbia campus is located by 61 percent. However, Clinton's leads

One of the greatest things about political speeches is that often what is said is the least important aspect -- it's what was ignored, how the message was presented, or even the demeanor and tone of the speaker that is most telling. While Ted Cruz's statement that any Republican not having a win yet should depart the race was the understatement of the Republican establishment of the evening, his message came out like a sigh of relief that his home state of Texas and Oklahoma came to the rescue

It's hard to criticize and poke fun at the Kansas political system, without taking a moment to pause and reflect on yesterday's sick carnage, one of the worst shooting rampages to happen in Kansas, in the small town of Hesston. Hesston was once known for being wiped out by an unexpected F5 tornado in 1990, destroying 226 homes and 21 businesses. The people were tough, they rebuilt, and for the next 26 years lived a quiet life you'd expect from a small community. The shooting rampage happened a

Other than the Wizard of Oz, tornadoes, and the world's largest ball of twine, most people seldom think much about Kansas -- unless they are on the boring 425-mile trek on I-70 to get somewhere else. Politically, this state is no different. We're a flyover state -- solid red Republican territory that votes too late in the cycle to usually matter. But since the last mid-term election in 2014, Kansas has been nothing but news politically, from an independent U.S. Senate candidate almost beating t

It's become an all too common strategy in politics, to taunt absurd laws by either passing or submitting a bill that mocks the current law, or by over-enforcement of the law or putting into place draconian consequences. While the subject of debt ceilings won't come up until the next president takes office, sequestration was supposed to be the so-called 'nuclear' option, a line that would be so damaging to cross that the politicians wouldn't dare do it. But they did, and at least on the surface

Is the two-party system dissolving before our very eyes? Is the nation witnessing the breakdown of the political process, as we know it? We are in one of the most fervent presidential contests to take place since maybe 1992, when Ross Perot jumped in and out of the race, challenging the status quo with his quixotic run. He surprisingly garnered 19 percent of the vote. Or, maybe we need to look back even further to 1912, when Theodore Roosevelt formed the Bull Moose Party, breaking from the Repu

It's incredibly sad that in a country that is supposed to be the "city upon a hill" example to the world, we rank 120th out of 169 countries in voter participation. In 2012, just under 55 percent of the voting age population turned out to vote, in a presidential race that was decided by 5 million votes. That's a lot of votes, but it could have been easily swayed either way by the 106 million voting age citizens who didn't think their vote mattered.We could learn a lot from countries where peop

In 2015, the Kansas legislature gave Kris Kobach (R), the secretary of state, the authority to prosecute instances of voter fraud. Before this measure, it was up to local district attorneys to investigate and prosecute. During the debate on the measure, Kobach assured the state legislature that he had uncovered 100 (and then later 200) cases of double voting. Yet, seven months into this executive power grab, only 6 people have been prosecuted under the new law. Kobach's numbers should have be

Since 2013, Kansas has required proof of citizenship to vote in elections. But there’s a small problem with that. While the Kansas voter registration form requires proof of citizenship, the federal voter registration form (available at eac.gov) does not. Kansas has requested that the Election Assistance Commission amend the state-specific instruction to the federal forms to include proof of citizenship, but the Commission has not acted on this request. To combat this, Secretary of State Kris K

The Centrist Project today released the results of an online survey of 1200 likely Missouri voters in the United States Senate election in 2016 that shows 34.5% of voters would support an unnamed independent candidate, while 19.1% would support the Republican candidate and 19.9% would support the Democratic candidate. Twenty-six percent of voters said they would support “whichever candidate most closely aligns with their values.” The survey did not specifically name any potential candidates for