Here in Oregon, ballots for the Nov. 8 general election go out in the mail starting Wednesday, Oct. 19. As that happens to be the date of our next edition, you’ll find plenty of election stories in this week’s Blue Mountain Eagle.

Our aim is to help you make informed voting decisions by bringing you information about every contested race in Grant County, and to that end we’ve sent out questionnaires to all the candidates in those races. We were a bit surprised to find that not every candidate included an email address with their election filings, but one of the realities of life out here on the Western frontier is that reliable internet access has not yet penetrated every corner of Grant County (although Ortelco, Grant County CyberMill and others are working on that problem).

In some cases we were able to contact these candidates by phone or by tracking them down in person at places we knew they were going to be. When that didn’t work, we mailed questionnaires to their postal addresses. 

As I write this, we have not yet received responses from all of the candidates, but we remain hopeful that we’ll hear from them in time to make deadline. In every case, we have made our best effort to contact all the candidates in contested local races. We hope you find our coverage helpful.

In case you missed it, last week’s paper featured stories on Boyer’s Cash Store in Monument, a move by the Grant County Court to bring full-time county employees back to 40 hours a week, the new CyberMill location in Prairie City and Rosalie Averett’s recollections of life in the vanished company town of Bates.

As always, I want to take this opportunity to thank our subscribers for their support. We can’t do this work without you!