Evolution Scores in Kansas Primary

Yudhijit Bhattacharjee
ScienceNOW Daily News
2 August 2006

Two years after being checkmated by proponents of intelligent design (ID), supporters of evolution are set to win back control of the Kansas state board of education. Their victory paves the way for the revoking of the state's science standards, which are widely seen as being favorable to the teaching of ID.

In Republican and Democratic primaries conducted on Tuesday, pro-evolution candidates won party nominations for three of the five board seats that are up for re-election in November. Three of the board's other five seats are held by moderates. The results of the primary races mean that regardless of the individual winners in the November election, the board's composition will flip from its existing 6-4 conservative tilt to at least a 6-4 majority controlled by moderates.

"This is a great day for Kansas," Sally Cauble, a moderate who won the Republican primary in western Kansas, told Science. The former elementary school teacher from Liberal, Kansas, had a tough race against incumbent Connie Morris, who has repeatedly mocked evolution as "a nice bedtime story." Cauble, who ended up winning by a margin of 54% to 46%, says she wants to vote out the pro-ID standards that were adopted last year in favor of standards issued earlier by a panel of scientists and teachers appointed by the board (ScienceNOW, 9 November 2005). Those standards, rejected by the current board, emphasize the teaching of evolution.

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Sanity finally wins in Kansas... thank God!

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