Make them earn your vote
Published 12:01 am Sunday, August 28, 2011
Like crocuses in spring, campaign signs are already sprouting up around the county, signaling the start of another election season.
Yep, it’s that time again — time to shift at least some thoughts from summer leisure to the issues and candidates competing for your attention, and your vote, this fall.
This year’s elections are for local offices. You’ll be electing county, city, school board and other leaders whose decisions directly affect life in your own neighborhood. It’s a process worth taking seriously.
Local budgets are feeling the ill effects of the national economy. County and city lawmakers, in particular, face increasingly tough choices about funding public services. Discerning voters should check candidates’ statements and background for evidence that they understand how public budgets work, that they’re capable of weighing competing priorities and that they’re willing to make difficult choices.
Information will be available to help you make your own choices this fall. This newspaper, as well as other local news sources, will cover various campaigns and ask candidates where they stand. The county Auditor’s Office will mail voters a guide in mid-October with candidate statements and information on ballot issues. Community groups will be holding candidate forums.
This editorial board will make endorsements in county races and contests in the county’s largest cities — Everett, Marysville, Lake Stevens, Monroe, Arlington, Lynnwood, Edmonds, Mukilteo and Mill Creek. (We’d do so in Snohomish, too, but none of its city council races have more than one candidate.) Our intention in making endorsements is simply to offer one point of view among many for voters to consider, one that includes the reasoning behind each choice.
Readers can add their own voice to the mix by writing a letter to the editor. This year, we’ll be publishing letters supporting candidates or ballot issues on HeraldNet (cmg-northwest2.go-vip.net/heraldnet/opinion) rather than in the printed edition, giving readers one place to go to read a variety of views. Running election letters online-only will also save limited space in the print edition for the many non-election letters we receive.
The same guidelines apply to election letters as other letters: send them to letters@heraldnet.com or by snail mail to The Herald, P.O. Box 930, Everett, 98206; include your name, address and a daytime phone number (we’ll only publish your name and hometown); keep it under 250 words and we won’t ask you to shorten it; and criticism is fine, but attacks that in our judgment cross the line of civility are not. If we receive large numbers of letters in support of any particular candidate or issue, we’ll just post a representative sampling.
Ballots go into the mail just eight weeks from now. Campaigns are coming after your vote; it’s up to you to treat it with the importance it deserves.
