Now more than ever, we need to make educated decisions about how to cast our votes.
That’s why the Star is changing our approach to election coverage. Our goal will be to provide tools that help voters understand who the candidates are, what they stand for, and the important issues each office handles.
We plan to publish candidate questionnaires, host online candidate interviews, invite guest opinion columns from candidates and more. Deciding what we wanted to do meant talking about what we should stop doing. And after much consideration, we decided we will not endorse candidates for the primary or general elections.
Readers consistently tell us they know which candidates they support for statewide elections and major local races because they have access to our news stories, as well as candidates’ social media, newsletters, and mass email. What they want is guidance on candidates and issues in the many down-ballot races that don’t get much attention, but play an important role in their daily lives. Pivoting away from endorsements gives us more time to focus on these races.
Our decision to not endorse candidates doesn’t mean we won’t call out politicians when they push repugnant ideas or present worthy proposals. It just means we aren’t going to try to influence your vote. There may be exceptions, such as endorsing initiatives we feel strongly voters should approve or vote down.
Here are a few of the tools we will offer voters this election season:
We are compiling lists of ballot initiatives and candidates in local, state, and federal elections, as well as organizations and politicians who endorse candidates or initiatives. Those lists will be available on our website soon and we will update them as needed.
In the coming days, we will post a questionnaire for candidates on our website. When candidates fill it out, we will post their responses so voters can review them.
In April we began publishing an invitation for candidates to submit guest opinions about an issue they think is important. So far, we received and published 20 of them on the Opinion pages. As we receive more, we will update the collection, which is available on our website.
Starting in August, we will host interviews with local candidates for the general election on Zoom. Voters can attend the interviews and submit questions they want candidates to answer. Keep an eye out for notices about those interviews in the Opinion pages. We also are gathering livestreams of candidate debates hosted by the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission and Arizona PBS.
If you would like to comment on our plan for covering the elections or have a question you’d like us to include in the candidate questionnaire, email us at staropinions@tucson.com.
As a final note, you may have heard that Gannett, the newspaper chain that is a partial owner of the Star, is cutting back on opinion content. That is not the case with the Star. We will continue to publish daily opinion pages with local opinions and letters to the editor.
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