Let’s all resolve to be engaged voters

With the new year comes the hope of a fresh start, an opportunity to change old habits.

That often means resolutions that focus on personal improvement. Saving more, losing weight, spending more quality time with the family and less time thumbing through the Blackberry.

We’d offer one more idea — Resolve to be an informed and engaged voter.

Go beyond basing a vote on a party, or a label, or an ideology, and do the work necessary to make an educated choice.

The time to start is now. The Iowa Caucuses are over and it’s on to the New Hampshire primary for presidential candidates. In Illinois, candidates are polishing campaigns seeking our votes in the March 20 primary election and the general election in November.

Suburban voters will decide races at the federal, state and local level.

In the coming weeks, candidates may stop by your home or send brochures through the mail. There will be ads on television and radio. Websites and email baskets will be filled with pitches and rallying cries. We may even see a few candidates shaking hands around town.

Each of us will have a chance to put a name with a face, hear a catchy sound bite and generally learn the talking points of each campaign.

But that’s not enough.

We all need to be engaged. That means getting off the couch and attending candidate forums to see them in action, searching out and comparing details and information about their position on key issues. We all need to educate ourselves.

In this time of bitter partisan politics and rhetoric in Washington and Springfield, and important services being squeezed out of tight budgets closer to home, all of us as voters need to do our homework about who will represent us and make the tough decisions.

Voters need to be wary of over-promising by a candidate. Voters need to sort through the “conventional political wisdom” repeated by analysts.

Voters need to know that a Republican, if elected president, might still have to work with a Democratic Senate, or a Democrat might still have to work with a Republican House. Do the candidates seem willing to really, actually compromise and work in a bipartisan fashion aimed at solutions rather than the next election? We’ve seen what gridlock produces and we don’t like it.

We pledge to help. We are building a online database that will include candidate responses to questionnaires and personal information.

And for the next nearly 11 weeks, our election coverage online and in print will focus on shining a light on the candidates — their backgrounds, experience and ideas for solving tough problems.

Being an educated voter isn’t easy. But taking control of government starts with making an informed decision on its representatives, and that’s worth the effort.