Readers may wonder why there is a cutoff of letters to the editor in this newspaper expressing support or opposition to candidates fully 11 days ahead of the Nov. 8 general election.
It is …
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Readers may wonder why there is a cutoff of letters to the editor in this newspaper expressing support or opposition to candidates fully 11 days ahead of the Nov. 8 general election.
It is completely about trying to exercise a policy of fairness. This year our cutoff date for publication of letters endorsing or challenging candidates was Thursday, Oct. 27. Notice of that cutoff date was published in a bold face box on our Opinion Page ahead of the cutoff to alert letter writers.
That means a deadline in print. A letter to the editor emailed to our office at 7:33 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 26 challenging an entire listing of school board candidates named in an emailed postcard was too late. It missed the Oct. 27 edition and could not have been published until Nov. 1. It did not run.
Back to the matter of fairness. If there were no cutoff date, a letter raising last minute questions about a candidate could not be answered.
That’s the situation we are trying to avoid. It’s also the explanation for a pair of letters that were published in our Nov. 1 edition — past the cutoff date. They were letters by candidates or supporters of candidates in response to what could be taken as critical letters to the editor previously published — the very definition of why there is an established pre-election end date on such letters.