As petitions are filed, an appeal to candidates

An open letter to candidates in the June 28 primary

Dear candidates,

Your campaigns surge to a new level of urgency this week as you file your petitions for congressional, legislative and state and county offices. Among the many resources the Daily Herald will use to help people get to know you, one stands out for the ability to let you describe yourself and your positions directly to voters.

Our candidate questionnaires.

Every election cycle, our candidate questionnaires become one of the tools voters use most frequently to determine whose name they will check at the ballot box. We need your help to bring this feature to them.

It starts by telling us how to reach you by email so we can send you the questionnaires in the first place.

We have worked to identify key issues in the races on the ballot and produce questions that let you define your positions in your words and your tone of voice. Of course, we require certain minimal standards of civility, accuracy and taste, but within those reasonable limits, you can be confident your message is getting to voters as you would want them to understand it.

Soon after petition filing ends on March 14, we'll begin sending these questions to you and your opponents. We can't get them to you, though, if we don't know how to reach you.

So, please, make it a priority today to let us know how to contact you. Send an email to elections@dailyherald.com including your full name, the position you are seeking, a website URL if you have one, the best phone number to call if we need to and, most important, an email address where we can send our questionnaire.

This information will not be shared publicly by us, but will be critical to allowing us to help you share your message with voters. We look forward to communicating with you, and helping you communicate with voters.

Thank you.

Jim Slusher, Deputy Managing Editor for Opinion