2023 Civic Health Assessment report for Kentucky released

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – Secretary of State Michael Adams and his office released the 2023 Civic Health Assessment Report.

This report discloses data about how knowledgeable Kentuckians are about how government works. Kentucky received a C overall.

Among some of the findings in the report, it is noteworthy that Kentuckians are much less polarized than many other states in the union and that they generally get most of their news from reputable sources, not social media.

“We found wide majorities of Kentuckians that were perfectly fine with dating someone of the other political party or their kid dating someone of the other political party, working for a person who’s and the other party versus what you see nationally. So we’re less polarized and we’re more distrusting of fake news,” Adams said.

Kentucky scored a D+ on Social Civics, or knowledge of how government works and who is in the government. One such issue is that only five in ten Kentuckians can tell how many branches of government there are, and only 49% could name a local elected official.

“It’s really troubling that only half of Kentuckians can tell you there are three branches of government. That’s the basic kind of stuff. Gosh, we should have learned in school and should take with us when we go to vote. So we know basic things about the government and how to hold it accountable and we found even lesser numbers than those know basic things like who their local officials are or their legislators,” Adams said.

One solution to raising the amount of civic knowledge in Kentucky is to have more civics classes in schools. this would not only work to bring more kinds of political ideas closer together, but to increase knowledge and hopefully voter turnout. Adams recommends a type of forum class that would allow students to discuss topics of the day.

“We need a place for students to come together in a classroom where they know each other, where they feel safe and to debate issues and to address current issues going on in the world and to be able to discuss them in a civil matter. The problem is kids don’t get that today,” Adams said.