As we get closer to midterm voting the first week in November, politics are top of mind for many of our readers.
Let me start by addressing a pressing issue: incorrect ballots!
We ran a small blurb in our Oct. 1 issue mentioning that mail-in ballots were incorrectly printed for the tri-community area, leaving off a candidate for a partial term for library board. We’ve gotten several phone calls and emails about that, so watch out for your replacement ballots, which were mailed last week. Use the ones that come with a bright pink sticker to distinguish them as the updated ballots.
Here are a few more thoughts on local politics and elections.
I’ve mentioned this before but thought I should write about it again: now that The Independent has transitioned to a nonprofit model, we have some limitations on our election coverage: we cannot directly endorse candidates, and we can’t tell you how to vote on state proposals.
What we can do is provide you with information on both sides of the proposal issues and introduce you to all the candidates.
I’ve sent questionnaires to candidates for school board and the library board, and to candidates for state representative. Depending on whether they respond by the Oct. 16 deadline I gave them, I will print the results in either our Oct. 22 issue or the Oct. 29 issue.
I get all kinds of opinions from readers about what we should and shouldn’t be printing in terms of politics, so I will tell you what my personal stance is: I will run any ad (we could use the money!!) that isn’t a lie and won’t get the paper sued for libel. I don’t have to agree with the content and often don’t, but I don’t want to get into the business of deciding whose viewpoint we print and which ones we don’t.
My stance is the same on letters to the editor. If you write to me, more than likely I’ll print your letter, and it doesn’t matter if I agree with you or not. If you disagree with what someone writes, you can always feel free to respond to them in a letter of your own! You do, however, need to sign your letter, because we don’t print anonymous letters to the editor.
One thing I can promise you is that any election coverage we print will be super local. I’m not particularly interested in printing any articles about national politics, because there are many other outlets covering that.
State candidates are more relevant, but I’m most interested in bringing you coverage of races specific to the tri-community area. The Independent’s mission is to keep our coverage hyper-local and concentrate on the smaller races that big media corporations don’t bother with.
Who are you endorsing in local races? Feel free to write me a letter and tell me who is getting your vote and why.