Educate yourself about your vote

There are 11 days remaining before voters begin making decisions on who will lead our various governmental agencies into the next year.

Seats in the State House of Representatives, US House of Representatives, Governor’s mansion, US Senate, local county commission, local school board, mosquito control district and county judge’s chair will be up for grabs in this election cycle.

Some of those races, particularly school board and county judge, could be settled with next Tuesday’s primary if one candidate pulls more than 50 percent of the vote.

That makes it important that everyone eligible get out and cast a ballot.

And every registered voter will be able to cast a ballot in the primary. The races will be limited, particularly for the rising number of voters registered with no party affiliation, but there are decisions to be made.

Every voter in Monroe County will get the chance to cast a ballot for county judge and for school board seats. They will also get the opportunity to vote on an elected or appointed school superintendent.

Just because this is a primary election and the final doesn’t take place until November, there are still many races and issues the voters need to act upon.

We have listened to the various candidates, talked to many of them, questioned many of them, and even have often gotten answers.

We know how we intend to mark the ballot come next Tuesday.

But we never presume to tell others how to mark their ballots.

During election season there are a multitude of sources from which the voter can draw information about candidates for the various elected positions.

If you can’t get to one of the dozens of candidate forums, there are profiles in almost every newspaper of at least some of the races.

There are radio and television interviews.

There are candidate advertising messages.

There are web sites.

There are fax numbers.

There are phone numbers.

There are email addresses.

Anyone who wants to become an informed voter has more opportunity to do so than they can probably take advantage of.

It is only by being an informed voter that a truly representative democracy works for all of us.

And we have always felt as though our readers are smart enough to gather enough information for themselves to be able to make intelligent decisions on who they want to represent them, and what issues they wish to support.

We always try to print as many candidate profiles as we can to help in the process, but staffing and space limitations prevent us from covering every race.

So we point out the multitude of other sources available.

We don’t offer an opinion on candidates. We will, however, offer an opinion on issues, usually in the vein of trying to disseminate information.

We also tend to turn away endorsement letters for political candidates. We will allow anyone to offer up their opinion on what a currently elected leader may or may not have done that they do or don’t agree with.

That’s called public discourse. And we encourage that. It adds to the pile of information.

You have 11 days left in which to get educated about the candidates and issues you will see on the ballot Tuesday, August 24.

You should.

Those issues will be the guiding principals for sometime to come.

Those candidates may well be the ones that will make the decisions you will have to live with for the next two or four years, possibly longer.

And if you are registered to vote you should find a way to do so.

No Comments »