Daily Herald opinion: A seriousness of purpose: Our endorsements can help you vote, even if you disagree with our choices

If much of what you read in today’s editorial sounds familiar, we’re glad. With nearly every election, we take an opportunity early in the campaign to explain one of the most prominent — and one of the most delicate — components of our election coverage, candidate endorsements. We don’t want to be repetitive, but it is important that you understand our process and the reasoning behind it. We hope that our message is getting through.

Not that everyone agrees with us. Some readers bristle at the audacity of newspapers making recommendations about how they should vote. And many newspapers, burdened as we all have been in recent years by declining resources, have decided the process is just too much trouble and ended it altogether or limited it substantially.

So far, though, we at the Daily Herald have stuck with a philosophy that the issue with endorsements is not audacity but community service, and with an awareness that our direct access to candidates, something not logistically available to every voter, gives us a degree of familiarity with them and the issues that merits the consideration of serious voters.

Taking advantage of that access involves complicated and time-consuming efforts to track down candidates, solicit their answers to key questions about their campaigns, nudge, nag and push them when they sometimes are slow to respond, and then conduct and record direct meetings with them to analyze their positions, their preparedness and their capabilities to serve in the roles they seek.

It is true that we must be more selective these days in deciding what races to endorse in, but where we apply the process, we do so with an earnest commitment. In the current cycle, that involves analyzing more than 60 races and nearly 750 candidates.

It bears noting at this point that the local elections facing us this spring have a distinct flavor of their own when compared against races for more high-profile state and national offices. To be sure, there can be a wide range of personality types, motivations and capabilities among a field of 750 candidates for local office, but we are continually struck by the degree of sincerity and interest in local affairs we find in the men and women who put themselves forward for consideration of municipal and school board positions. It is a commitment that generally rises above mere self-interest or personal ambition.

That can make choosing among them a difficult task, so our conclusions are often the product not only of intense research but also thorough, candid discussions and self-examination.

So on Tuesday, we will begin presenting the results of our work. Endorsement editorials will continue nearly every day through Sunday, March 16, ending on the eve of expanded early voting on Monday, March 17. Voting will continue through Election Day on Tuesday, April 1.

We do not offer our positions as the final word on a particular campaign. More accurately, we consider our endorsements a place to begin. Your research and your analysis may lead to different conclusions than ours, but we hope ours give you ideas to think about that help you feel more confident about your choices, whatever they are.

We encourage you to follow our endorsements and to respond to them if you’re so inclined. Feel free to contact us via email at fencepost@dailyherald.com. If you want your response to be considered by our full audience, limit your comments to no more than 300 words and include your full name, home town and (not for publication) a telephone number where you can be reached if necessary.

Our aim, as we have said many times, is to spur voters to deliberate, to research and to accept the obligation of voting with seriousness of purpose. That is how we continue to approach our role as a community citizen on Election Day. We will feel honored to join you in the process.