Endorsing Around

Lake County's voters wouldn't be voters if they didn't vote every once in a while. The majority never vote at all. Of those that do, they only vote when they know there is an election. And most of them only know there is an election scheduled when they have to wade through all the annoying candidate endorsements in their newspaper -- to get to the Walgreens coupons.

To make matters worse, last month the Sun-Times announced that its newspapers will no longer make political endorsements, forever. All of which forebodes a record low (if not negative) Primary election turnout in Lake County. So as a service to Sun-Times readers, and to Lake County voters in general, your LakeCountyEye is herewith tipping off readers of this blog that there is a Primary election coming up on March 20.

With the Sun-Times officially out of the endorsement game, Lake County's other newspapers of record have jumped into the lurch with both figurative guns ablazing. Like, for instance, the Chicago Tribune ...

We can think of our own reasons to stop making endorsements. They antagonize some readers. They demand hundreds of hours of work to dig through the records and positions of candidates for office. They often require us to hold our nose and choose the less awful of the choices. They allow the fiercest partisans to dismiss us as Republican shills or Democratic lapdogs. We respect the decision by the Sun-Times, but we intend to keep doing endorsements.
Why we endorse
You have to make decisions. The Tribune tries to help.

... and the Daily Herald ...

Sometimes we wish we could endorse more than one candidate in a race because more than one impresses. Sometimes we wish we could avoid endorsing any candidate because no one impresses. But only rarely have we given in to either wish. The electorate must make a choice so it's our responsibility to make one too. Some conservatives label our Opinion page view as liberal. Some liberals label it as conservative. We believe both labels are wrong.
The sentiment behind our endorsements in Election 2012

Now, your LakeCountyEye has been around the roundabout more than few times, but can only recall a single instance where a newspaper endorsement actually made a difference: A perplexed voter, who took pride in voting every election, confessed he rarely recognized any of the names on his ballot and he would often vote by random chance. So this voter was advised to take a newspaper along when he went to the polls. Well, after about 45 minutes the exasperated voter emerged from the voting booth saying he saw none of the newspaper's candidates on the ballot. And he was forced to cast write-in votes for Pauly Honda, Raymond Chevrolet and Gregory Hyundai.

Adding insult to injury he was unable to print Anthony Pontiac-GMC-Buick in the available space and had to ask for a new ballot. Ha ha, true story.

Anyhow, operatives don't need to be informed that the only endorsement that matters -- at least in Lake County -- is your LakeCountyEye's endorsement. And the only way to win your LakeCountyEye's endorsement is to forward your checks, money orders, unmarked small bills to:

lakecountyeye@gmail.com

Third-party checks will not be accepted, unless they have been -- well -- endorsed by you.