Candidates: We need your e-mail addresses

One hundred and one.

Not dalmations; that's the number of local governments falling within our circulation area in DuPage County.

Twenty nine school districts. Twenty two park districts. Twenty municipalities. Fifteen library districts. Nine townships. Six fire districts.

Lord only knows how many candidates will appear on the April 7 ballot. Hundreds, no doubt. Candidate filing ended at 5 p.m. Monday, but we're still trying to track 'em all down. It seemed a bit impractical to ask the staff to call all 102 governments in one day, so we've been taking a piecemeal approach this week.

At the close of filing, we made the calls to see what mayoral races were shaping up in the 15 communities that have races this season. As we reported in Tuesday's paper, several mayors get a free pass, but no fewer than four candidates filed in Winfield, one of our smaller communities, but one that takes its politics real seriously. Mayors in Aurora, Lombard and Villa Park face three-way races.

In Wednesday's editions, we rounded up the remainder of the municipal candidates, those running for village boards and city councils. On Thursday, it was the candidates seeking a spot on those 29 school boards. We had planned to run the names of all the park board candidates in today's paper, but a few things conspired against us: 1. Apparently, some humongous parks convention is going on this week, and several we talked to said no one was available to give us the information. (Yes, local candidates file for office at the administrative headquarters of the office they seek, so no central clearinghouse, and hence all the phone calls.) 2. Some of the park districts are really tiny, and have limited hours. One, a reporter discovered, is open only an hour each day. 3. Some sort of political tiff was going on in Springfield, and took up a lot of space in today's paper. You might have noticed.

So, we'll be looking for a home in upcoming days for the park candidates, the library and fire boards, the township candidates.

And, as long as the reporters are calling up for the names, they're also asking for the little details we need about these candidates. You know, stuff like their e-mail address, mailing address, phone numbers. Some governments are just fine with giving out the extra info; others, though, treat it as classified, top-secret data. A couple governments, the city of Oakbrook Terrace and Naperville Township, required us to submit a Freedom of Information Act form to get anything beyond the names.

Let me be honest: I don't think we're going to be able to provide a plethora of political coverage in many of the smaller communities and governments. But we are making an honest attempt. We'll be asking our candidates to go online and fill out questionnaires about their qualifications for office. We'll publish the answers on dailyherald.com and get as many as possible into print.

But first we really, really need those e-mail addresses, so we can get the word out to the candidates.

So let me make this plea to all 101 governments: Please let us have this most basic of information about the people who have chosen to run for public office.

It's the civic thing to do, don't you think?