Our View....Read, think, VOTE

Talk about it

A recent political cartoon in the Columbus Dispatch newspaper featured a man walking through a whirlwind of papers, TV sets and computer screens.

“Frankenstorm?” he says as he is buffeted by campaign mailers, negative ads and a zillion other election-related items. “Welcome to my world.”

Take heart, America. For better or for worse, Election Day is Tuesday.

Fortunately, Carlton County candidates – for the most part – don’t emulate candidates running in the national races. They don’t spend money on ads running down the other candidate, they don’t send out a lot of fancy campaign mailers. For the most part, they door knock, participate in local forums, put yard signs up (some of them in the wrong places) and try to convince folks to choose their name in the ballot box.

For those who aren’t yet certain which oval spaces you’ll be carefully coloring in come Tuesday, the Pine Journal is jam-packed with helpful information this week.

We have an eight-page local candidate voter guide in the C Section, with answers from the candidates themselves about who they are and how they feel about a variety of issues. There are also stories explaining school levy and bond questions in Esko, Wrenshall and Barnum, as well as stories explaining the Local Option Sales Tax referendums in Cloquet and Moose Lake.

Because there wasn’t enough room to put all the election news in the C Section, we have stories on the two proposed state Constitutional amendments – on marriage and voter identification – on page A3 plus profiles of the candidates for U.S. House and Senate on page A5. For those who forgot to register to vote earlier this year, find out what you need to bring to the polls Tuesday to register there on page A1. Finally, if you can’t find what you’re looking for in this week’s paper, go to our website at www.pinejournal.com for more stories under the Election 2012 tab.

There is one item you won’t find in this week’s Pine Journal – political endorsements. For those who don’t know, endorsements are statements of opinion advocating for a particular candidate.

In the case of newspapers, an endorsement usually comes with a lengthy explanation of why the editorial board feels that particular candidate would better represent the town/county/region/state.

At the Pine Journal, there are a number of reasons we don’t endorse.

No. 1, all two of us full-time writers in the editorial department would rather spend our limited time writing stories or collecting responses that tell our readers more about the candidates and their views, backgrounds and history (in addition to writing all the other stories for that particular week).

No. 2, we’re not convinced endorsements (from anyone) matter all that much in this day and age. After all, people in today’s world will argue against something presented as scientific fact until they’re blue in the face, so why would they vote according to someone else’s opinion, unless it happened to coincide with their own?

Most importantly, who are we – or anyone else for that matter – to tell you how to vote?

Please, for your sake and ours, take your responsibility as a citizen seriously. Do your homework.

Then go and cast a vote you can be proud of.

Jana Peterson

Tags: election 2012, news