Congressional pages carry electoral votes into a joint session of Congress in January 2017.
Think you know all there is to know about the Electoral College? Test your smarts with this quiz.
This quiz is powered by CredSpark.
The 50: Kentucky
More than half of America’s military veterans identify as independents, not Democrats or Republicans. Yet in many states with closed primary systems, those voters are barred from participating in taxpayer-funded primary elections. Because veterans swear an oath to defend the Constitution, not a political party, a growing coalition of veteran-led organizations is advocating for open primaries and other electoral reforms designed to expand voter participation and strengthen representative democracy.
In Kentucky, veterans have emerged as leading voices in a nonpartisan campaign to open the Commonwealth’s closed primary system. Their efforts come as the state's electorate shifts: independent voters are the fastest-growing segment of registered voters.
Heading into the 2026 midterm elections, independent registration is outpacing growth among both major parties. In July 2026, new independent registrations surpassed those of Republicans and Democrats combined. Independents now make up roughly 11% of Kentucky voters, but the Commonwealth remains the only Southern state with a fully closed primary system, which prevents non-affiliated voters from participating in elections that often determine who ultimately holds office.
For many Kentuckians, the issue isn't partisanship; it's representation. They pay taxes that help fund primary elections yet have no voice in selecting the candidates who appear on the general election ballot. Among them is Jessica McWhorter, a Marine veteran and Libertarian voter, who says the disconnect raises fundamental questions about fairness and participation in the democratic process:
It's not like I'm getting to vote for my representation; it's pretty much I have to take what I get, which is just not right. That's not what—when we first had this idea of a republic, that's not what it was based off of. Everybody was just Americans."
Known affectionately as "Mac" within many of her networks, Jessica McWhorter is heavily involved in high-level leadership roles dedicated to supporting fellow service members. She serves in the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) as the Department of Kentucky State Student Veterans Chairman and as both Commander of Millsprings VFW Post 269 and a District 11 officer. Her extensive dedication to the organization has earned her national recognition, holding the title of National Aide-de-Camp to the VFW Commander-in-Chief. Beyond her work with the VFW, McWhorter collaborates with organizations like the Kentucky Department of Veterans Affairs (KDVA) to foster community and share vital, life-changing resources tailored for women veterans.
I spoke with McWhorter and other veterans for an episode of The Fulcrum's award-winning series The 50: Voices of a Nation, which explores how participation, representation, and trust are shaping civic life across the Commonwealth.
- YouTube youtu.be
Veterans’ advocate Daniel Collins emphasizes that the consequences of closed primaries extend far beyond administrative access, striking at the core of civic trust and representation:
"I'm not blue, I'm not red, I am Dan. And the more they try to label me one way or the other, the less American they are. And I will let them know that. Like, you can go ahead and paint me one way or the other, but that's not the American thing to do. The American thing to do is unite."
Collins is a military veteran and grassroots election reform advocate in Kentucky who serves as a prominent nonpartisan voice campaigning to open the state's closed primary voting system to the fast-growing segment of independent voters. As a Kentucky State Leader for Veterans for All Voters—a national, veteran-led organization that champions election innovation and voting access—Collins actively fights to keep independent taxpayers out of primary voting loops. Driven by a philosophy that prioritizes national unity over political labeling, his grassroots work focuses on bridging political divides, restoring civic trust, and ensuring every voter has an equal voice in the democratic process.
Reform advocates with organizations such as"The mere fact, as a veteran, to say that I have served and I am paying taxes, and you are a private organization that is not in the Constitution—you are essentially a social club, and politics is what you talk about—that you are telling me as an American citizen that I can't vote, I think that is outrageous."
After a 34-year career in the U.S. Army and U.S. Army Reserve, Ritter has become a prominent advocate for voting reform in Kentucky, focusing his efforts on dismantling the state's closed primary system. As an independent voter, Ritter campaigns against excluding non-partisan citizens from primary elections, arguing from a place of fiscal fairness. He contends that because public tax dollars fully fund polling stations, voting machines, and election workers, shutting out independent taxpayers is fundamentally unfair and effectively forces them to subsidize elections they are legally barred from participating in.
Representative Adam Moore, a Democrat representing District 45 in the Kentucky House of Representatives, has dedicated his first term to championing veteran affairs, medical affordability, and consumer advocacy for his constituents in Fayette and Jessamine counties. Proving a strong commitment to bipartisan collaboration, he founded and chairs Kentucky's first-ever bipartisan Veterans Caucus to better support the state's military community. In addition to his advocacy for veterans, Moore has backed vital healthcare legislation to lower epinephrine costs, delivering tangible relief to families managing severe medical conditions.
Moore acknowledges the ongoing debate between maintaining historical electoral traditions and adapting to modern voter demographics. While Kentucky has enacted notable voting reforms in recent years—such as expanding early voting, clarifying voter identification rules, and streamlining absentee ballot procedures—Representative Moore notes that lawmakers must resolve whether the primary system reflects today’s electorate or one from decades past.
"Where people used to care more about the person who's running, now people care more about whether it's an R or a D, or red or blue. People have gotten more divisive in their politics, and so we have kind of grown apart within that closed primary system."
Community leaders stress that resolving this tension is vital to maintaining public faith in democratic institutions. Liza Holland, President of the League of Women Voters in Lexington, notes that access to the ballot and public trust are inextricably linked:
"I do believe that the exclusionary nature of primaries here really does have an effect on the apathy that happens in our elections. ... If you don't feel like your voice is heard or matters, what's the incentive to get involved in the process?"
Holland champions non-partisan voter education and robust civic engagement. Outside of her leadership with the League, she is a dedicated educational consultant and entrepreneur, operating as the "Chief Curiosity Officer" for her firm, Better Questions for Brighter Futures, and as President of Holland Management Services. Her multi-faceted work in the Lexington community spans hosting the Voting Matters podcast on WUKY to being publicly recognized by the Lexington History Museum for her contributions to local civic life.
As the 2026 midterm elections draw near, the debate over primary reform extends beyond partisan politics—serving as a broader benchmark for whether Kentucky will update its voting structures to reflect an increasingly independent and engaged electorate.Hugo Balta is the executive editor of The Fulcrum and the publisher of the Latino News Network
A former Miss Texas and Texas House candidate explains why judges, DAs, school boards and city councils shape daily life, and why your vote counts for more there.
I grew up in a small Texas town, and for most of my life I had one plan: leave. I didn’t hate it. I just assumed the interesting stuff happened somewhere else.
Then I became Miss Texas and spent a year driving all over this state. I met people in towns smaller than mine who ran food pantries out of church basements and coached Little League with no budget. They showed up for each other in ways that never made the news. That year changed my mind about Texas.
I started seeing what it could be, not just what it was.
People love to say all eyes are on Texas. Lately, that feels truer than ever. This election season has been loud, expensive, and mostly happening on our phones. Every scroll brings another ad, another clip, another person telling me everything is on the line.
And somewhere in all that noise, I think we lost the part most people care about—local races.
I don’t mean it as a civic-duty, eat-your-vegetables thing. I mean it selfishly, and I think that’s fine. People care about their own lives first. Their rent, their kids’ school, the road they take to work. On a plane, they tell you to put your own oxygen mask on before helping anyone else. Voting can work the same way.
The Senate and governor’s races matter. I’m not pretending they don’t. But keep scrolling down your ballot, past the names you’ve seen on TV, and beyond. Texas Supreme Court justices. District judges. Your district attorney. Then, in the spring, school board and city council. These are the people deciding who gets charged, how your custody case goes, what your kids learn, and whether your street ever gets fixed. If you aren’t sure where to start, local newspapers, nonpartisan voter guides, and your county’s website often have simple breakdowns about who is running and what these offices do. It is easier than it seems to find out what matters in your community.
Those races get a fraction of the attention and turnout. Which means your vote goes a lot further there.
I know how this might sound coming from me. I ran for the Texas House at 26 and lost. About $2 million went into that race, and some days it felt like it all went down the drain. You’d think that would make me jaded.
Some days it did.
But it also taught me something. Almost nobody I met at their door wanted to talk about whatever national fight was trending that week. They wanted to talk about property taxes and schools. Local stuff. Their stuff.
There’s a trend online right now about 2016 nostalgia. People are posting about how the world felt right before that election, when things seemed mostly okay, and the future didn’t feel so scary. They’re calling it millennial optimism.
I get it. I miss that feeling too. But I don’t think we get it back by scrolling through old photos. I think we get a little of it back by paying attention to what’s close to home, the stuff we can actually watch change.
So this year I’m voting the whole ballot, top to bottom. And when the spring elections come around, I’m showing up for those too.
Selfishly. For my own block. And if enough of us do that, it starts to look a lot like caring about everyone else’s block. If you’re voting this year, tell a friend or a neighbor your plan. Invite them to go with you, or just share when you went and how it went. A simple conversation can remind us that we’re in this together.
Averie Bishop is a Democracy Architects Fellow and a lawyer, former Miss Texas, and Democracy Architects Council Fellow. She ran for the Texas State Legislature at 26 and now talks local politics, pop culture, and life in Dallas with nearly a million followers online.
Social Security faces automatic cuts in 2032 and Medicare in 2033. New polling suggests that gives Democrats a powerful election issue. Here’s the case.
The Republican Party’s long game to reduce administrative state entitlement spending centers on creating a debt crisis to provide an excuse for limiting such spending. It may soon pay off. That strategy involved a quarter-century of engineered tax cuts responsible for the stunning rise in sovereign U.S. debt, threatening an eventual economic crisis.
Social Security benefits are projected under current law to be automatically cut in 2032. And Medicare benefits are projected to be automatically cut in 2033. Congressional Republicans intend for those automatic cuts to occur, opposing new taxes to prevent cuts. And they are using the ballooning national debt as an excuse to also oppose new general revenue spending to prevent benefit cuts.
Few voters are aware of these looming automatic benefit cuts. But they are a compelling opportunity for Democrats to dramatize their support for current benefit levels of Social Security and Medicare.
Five Republican tax cuts for elites since 2002 supplemented by tax evasion and eroded tax enforcement caused Federal tax revenues to decline by 2.4% of GDP during 2002-2026 compared to 1995-2001. Budget deficits jumped. That missing revenue is why Republicans are borrowing 29 cents of every $1 the government spends – ballooning the national debt year after year.
To build public support for cutting entitlements, billionaires and Republicans are gaslighting voters, misrepresenting the source of that debt. Instead of tax cuts, Medicare and Medicaid are demonized in the Republican bluebook Project 2025 as “principal drivers” of the national debt: “our deficit problem is a Medicare and Medicaid problem.”
Social Security and Medicare are the largest entitlement programs, making them juicy targets for Republican elites. And opportunity beckons. If insolvent, current law requires an automatic 24% annual benefit reduction for the 75 million Social Security participants beginning in 2032 - an $18,400 annual reduction for a typical couple. And it requires a 12% cut in annual Medicare (hospital) reimbursements beginning in 2033 - raising out-of-pocket costs for 75 million Medicare patients.
These automatic reductions are catnip for Congressional Republicans. They can cut entitlements by simply sitting on their hands, refusing to raise taxes or spending to replenish the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. To obfuscate the cuts they actually make, Congressional Republicans mislabel their benefit reductions as “rooting out waste.”
At gravest risk is Medicare because Party elites since Reagan have been ideologically opposed to “socialized” medicine. For some time, Republican budgets have whittled down Medicare while gradually replacing it with for-profit private health insurers (Medicare Advantage) that deny care and provide lower quality care at a higher cost.
For Social Security, Republicans propose raising the retirement age to 69 from 67 which would reduce lifetime benefits 8%. Yet, 78% of respondents to a June 2026 Quinnipiac survey specifically opposed raising the retirement age to 70. Moreover, their proposed changes are too meager in any event to avoid trust fund insolvency and benefit cuts for Social Security and Medicare.
That Republican stratagem is risky because Congressional Democrats have an ace-in-the-hole.
A question buried deep in a September 2026 survey of Senate battleground states found that support for reforms to sustain current Social Security benefits jumped from 49% to 91% once voters learn about the pending automatic cuts. In addition, Medicare is also extremely popular, with 85% of Americans opposing any benefit cuts.
These data suggest that advocating reforms to sustain these two entitlements is a promising major Democratic Party theme.
For Social Security, Democrats embrace The Roosevelt Institute and Biden administration’s proposed reforms. First, despite virtually all real income growth in recent decades flowing upward, the social security payroll-tax exempts income from wages above $184,500. That cap could be eliminated, a move supported by 85% of respondents surveyed by the American Association of Retired Persons. Second, the payroll tax could be expanded to tap non-wage income from sources favored by the wealthy that are presently exempt – large inheritances, corporate profits and capital gains.
Democrats also support reforms establishing a solid fiscal foundation for Medicare. As proposed by President Biden, for instance, the net investment income tax and Medicare payroll tax could be increased on incomes above $400,000. And a host of Republican tax cuts for high earners and corporations in 2017 and 2025 can be reversed. Other Democratic reform proposals would reduce the drain on the Medicare program by the unreliable Medicare Advantage program managed by private insurance firms illegally “upcoding.” They habitually over-charge Medicare for medical procedures by misclassifying enrollee ailments as sicker than they are. Finally, since Medicare reimburses health providers at about half of current private provider prices, a gradual expansion of Medicare (perhaps lowering the eligibility age to 62) would be a powerful weapon to lower health care costs nationwide.
All these Democratic entitlement reforms would be popular and obviate the need for benefit cuts.
Democrats and Republicans are offering different solutions to the Social Security and Medicare debt crises. Partisanship aside, their solutions reflect how each Party perceives the role of government, the Administrative State and entitlement spending.
At the moment, surveys suggest that voters support Democratic plans to prevent the benefit cuts favored by Republicans. A major reason is that health care has emerged as the leading 2026 domestic concern, with 68% of independent voters worried about its cost. Some 35% of these swing voters trust Democrats to control health care costs compared to just 15% who trust Republicans. They also trust Democrats to manage the future of Medicare by a margin of 37% - 15%. And some 44% of these pivotal voters say health costs will have a “major impact” on which party’s candidate they support.
Independents also trust Democrats more than Republicans by an 11 percentage point margin to handle Social Security concerns.
Since FDR, Democrats have been stewards of Social Security and Medicare. Reflecting that responsibility, they should make preventing automatic benefit cuts an election issue.
George Tyler is a former deputy assistant treasury secretary and World Bank official. He is the author of books including Billionaire Democracy and What Went Wrong.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (L) and U.S. President Donald Trump followed by Chinese first lady Peng Liyuan and U.S. first lady Melania Trump arrive for a state dinner in the East Room of the White House on September 24, 2026 in Washington, DC.
When Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived at the White House on 24 September, the U.S. welcomed him with an elaborate display of ceremony. The Army Herald Trumpets sounded a fanfare, the Chinese and American national anthems were played, and the Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps performed. A military review was followed by a flyover involving a B-2 bomber and four F-22 fighter jets, according to the White House. It was an extraordinary production for two countries that still disagree on some of the most important issues in international politics.
Talks between President Donald Trump and Xi touched on trade, artificial intelligence and Taiwan. The visit was marked by warm words and some signs of cooperation, but it did not erase the fundamental competition between the United States and China. So why was all this ceremony staged? It is tempting to dismiss political pomp as mere window dressing: an expensive historical relic surrounding the serious business taking place behind closed doors. As a music historian, however, I think this misunderstands what ceremony does. Ceremony can become particularly valuable when words alone are not enough.
Long before governments could issue statements instantly, political authority communicated through sound and movement. Trumpets announced arrivals and bells marked public events. Processions established hierarchies, while anthems and military bands allowed states to demonstrate their relationships even before anyone issued a communiqué.
Today, a president can address millions of people in seconds, while citizens can follow diplomatic negotiations almost in real time. And yet, when another head of state arrives, we still raise flags, invite musicians and perform carefully rehearsed rituals. The purpose of ceremony is not necessarily to demonstrate agreement. Sometimes its purpose is to make disagreement manageable.
Music is especially useful here because it can express recognition without requiring ideological consensus. Performing another country's national anthem does not imply approval of its government or policies. It signifies recognition of the state and the people represented by its leader. The same is true of many diplomatic rituals. A handshake does not resolve a trade dispute, and a state dinner does not ease tensions over Taiwan. These gestures instead create a temporary framework within which disagreements can take place.
Much of our public political culture is designed to highlight differences. Diplomacy sometimes has to do something more complex: acknowledge deep disagreements while preserving a relationship capable of weathering them. Ceremony offers a language that makes this possible. Of course, there is another side to political spectacle. Ritual can glorify power. Military ceremony deliberately demonstrates strength, and the B-2 bomber that flew over the White House was hardly a neutral prop.
Nor should carefully orchestrated hospitality be confused with diplomatic success. Governments can stage grand ceremonies while achieving very little, and pomp can divert attention from difficult political realities. Ceremony cannot replace successful diplomacy. But it does not lose its meaning simply because it does not lead to the signing of a treaty.
Consider the mixture of signals contained in the White House welcome. The Chinese national anthem was played alongside the American one. Xi was received with the honours accorded to a visiting head of state. At the same time, the ceremony demonstrated U.S. military might with extraordinary clarity. Hospitality and power were not contradictory messages. They were conveyed simultaneously.
This is something ritual does exceptionally well. Music historians encounter this throughout history: music has accompanied coronations, funerals and diplomatic events because it can communicate meaning without requiring everyone present to interpret that meaning in precisely the same way.
Relations between states, like relations between people, depend on more than the transmission of information. They also depend on recognition. A ceremony says: you have arrived; we recognise the significance of this meeting; for the duration of this encounter, we have agreed to occupy the same political space. None of this requires friendship.
In fact, ceremony may be most revealing precisely when friendship is absent. If two governments already agree, ritual reinforces an existing relationship. When they are deeply divided, the ritual itself can become part of the mechanism that allows them to remain in the same room.
Outside the ceremonial framework of the Trump-Xi meeting lay unresolved questions about trade, artificial intelligence and Taiwan. Inside it were trumpets, flags and carefully rehearsed movements. One did not preclude the other. The ceremony created a temporary language through which two rival powers could acknowledge one another without pretending that their differences had disappeared.
In an era when compromise is often seen as weakness and disagreement as a reason to stop listening, there may be something worth noting in this old diplomatic tradition. Sometimes the first achievement isn't agreement. It’s the fact that dialogue remains possible.
Stacy Jarvis is a Manchester-based music historian, culture writer and violinist. She writes about classical music, cultural history and the intersections between music, politics and society, with work appearing in The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Conversation and other UK and international publications. She is also a radio contributor and is completing a PhD in Musicology at the University of Birmingham.
