A guideline for supporting your candidate

With the General Election a month away, The Press wants to outline its guidelines for submissions regarding candidates and issues that will be on the Nov. 4 ballot.

Starting next week and through the election, contributions from our regular columnists who address political issues will be on hold. They will resume after the election. It has been standard practice for The Press to pull regular political columnists four weeks before the General Election and we will continue that practice this year.

We will accept letters to the editor endorsing candidates through Oct. 30. Letters should be no longer than 250 words. 

We also will accept My Turn submissions regarding candidates and political issues through Oct. 30. They can be no longer than 500 words. 

If submissions are a little over the word limit, we’ll let them go. If they are a lot over, we’ll kick them back to the author and give them the option to edit them for length. 

We are not publishing submissions from candidates for office, as we do not want the editorial page to be turned into a place where folks can conduct their campaign. 

However, if a letter to the editor or My Turn submission is critical of a candidate, questions their actions or words, points out what the writer believes are issues of concern with a candidate, that particular candidate will be allowed to respond if they wish. It’s only fair.

All that said, we encourage our readers to support candidates with letters to the editor. Strong opinions in The Press are a sign of an engaged community that’s paying attention to who is running for office. Remember, though, letter writers are limited to one every 30 days.

We encourage residents to listen to what candidates have to say and become familiar with their stances on key issues. To help with that, The Press will be conducting and recording in-depth interviews with candidates in our office next week and these will be posted on our social media platforms. We will also be publishing a voter guide later this month.

The Press is also helping with the League of Women Voters of Kootenai County’s free candidate forum from 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday at the Coeur d’Alene Public Library. The forum will cover the mayoral and city council races for Coeur d’Alene.

The Press looks forward to covering a lively, vibrant election and our hope is we see a record voter turnout on Election Day.