Election Season Letter Policies
As the primary season nears an end, the general election season is beginning to rear its head. Politics are a reliably contentious area of discussion at all times, but especially as we approach another highly contested and statistically tight presidential race at the top of the ticket.
Looking ahead to the balance of the year, the Enterprise would like to present the following policies regarding letters to the editor and contributions from candidates for office leading up to November.
For candidates, we will extend each candidate the opportunity to submit a Letter to the Editor from their perspective as a citizen. In this issue, such a letter can be read from Joseph Messerly, who will be running for the District 35A Representative seat. Consider this citizen letter as an introduction to Messerly as a resident of the city, county, state, and country. All other candidates running this election season (including those running for re-election) will be extended the same courtesy. Please sign your letter with your name and city of residence, but leave off direct campaigning and your campaign affiliation in the message.
All subsequent materials from candidates will require the purchase of ad space, in the interests of content neutrality. All such content will require an accurate “paid for by” statement to be included with the print run. We encourage candidates to focus on what they themselves will do for voters, rather than on their opponents.
For voters, it is always hard to anticipate how actively letters to the editor will be pursued by the community. As a starting point, though, we would ask writers to limit themselves to one submission a quarter (every 90 days or so) so that we can provide space to as many voices as possible. Also, please try to limit contents to 200 words or so out of the same interest in space.
Because there are likely to be a number of people writing on the same candidates or issues, we reserve the right to choose a representative example of those voters’ position to publish in situations where that is the case during a single week. We also reserve the right to reject the publication of any letter than indulges in specific, personal insults or attacks on candidates rather than policies or positions, or any letter than exceeds the word count in significant ways.
As a paper, we hope to fill the role of town square, where anyone in the community is welcome to share their views, opinions, and insights. Our paper will not make any candidate endorsements during the election cycle, though we again reserve the right to take an editorial position on more general issues of interest to local voters as they arise.
Hopefully, this will be a season for the open and polite exchange of viewpoints, shared or otherwise.
