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Slusher: Watch out for dirty tricks in final days of campaign

What is it about the most sacred act in the democratic process - voting - that so appeals to the baser instincts of the people seeking the votes? Election shenanigans are hardly anything new, with the famously ugly presidential election of 1800 still holding a singular place in America's lamentable history of campaign misdeeds. But they're still a shameful subversion of the goal of letting a well-informed electorate choose the candidate they think can best represent their interests in government.

We haven't seen it yet this cycle, but almost invariably at election time we'll find campaign ads in which candidates not endorsed by the Daily Herald lift a word or phrase complimentary to them in our editorial endorsing their opponents and promote it as though we supported them: "The Daily Herald called Candidate A 'smart and energetic'!" - of course, never noting the "but" that followed.

Some candidates also will play fast and loose with our endorsements in other ways, perhaps saying, for instance, that "Candidate A has been endorsed by the Daily Herald," because we endorsed him in a previous election or primary.

In early October, we received an angry letter from a resident who thought we had published a flier containing gross distortions and outright misstatements about a particular legislative candidate. That couldn't happen; we don't publish candidate fliers and wouldn't put our logo on them under any circumstances. It turned out that the committee behind this mailer - which appeared before our endorsements began running - summarized an article we published and prominently displayed our logo as though we concurred with their point of view. It also turned out that we did not support the candidate.

In another case earlier in this campaign, a legislative candidate issued a tweet almost immediately following his endorsement interview with our editorial board that made it appear we'd endorsed him, weeks before we began publishing endorsements of anybody. When we complained almost immediately, he apologized and removed the tweet, and then his opponent's campaign used the incident, despite knowing that we'd made a stink about it, to publish a bitter and misleading diatribe at an online comment site assaulting the integrity of our endorsement process.

Activities like this spread far beyond distortions and misuses of the Daily Herald's positions, and they're almost impossible to stop. I raise them now because you're surely going to see even more of them in the next 11 days, not just involving items we've published but involving "facts" and tortured interpretations of facts from all manner of sources.

It's important to note that plenty of candidates behave themselves. Indeed, a particularly unfortunate byproduct of the misbehavior is that it taints the earnest efforts of candidates who try reasonably to distinguish themselves. In our editorial today, we plead with candidates to set a more productive, respectful tone. Hopefully, most will. But whatever tone they set, be careful about what you believe. Our endorsements and our positions are clearly stated in the material we've published, much of it gathered in a single place at our Election Guide. If you want your vote to deserve the sacred role it plays, base it on what you find there and in your other research, not on the treacherous twists to which too many campaigns resort.

Jim Slusher, jslusher@dailyherald.com, is an assistant managing editor at the Daily Herald. Follow him on Facebook at facebook.com/jim.slusher1 and on Twitter at @JimSlusher.

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