COLUMN: Voters, lend me your ears

Forty-eight days.

Not counting today, that is the exact number of days left until the general election Nov. 2.

Voters have 48 days to make up their minds about who to vote for, and those running for office have 48 days to get their messages to the masses.

Here at The Anderson News, we’ve come up with a way to kill both of these birds with one stone — our website.

We have a section of our site dedicated to providing our readers with profiles of each candidate running for local office, and it’s incredibly easy to find. Just visit www.thean dersonnews.com. When the page loads, you’ll see a box just above the Marketplace heading on the right side that says “Click here for 2010 political races.”

It’s that easy. What is slightly more difficult is collecting all of the information that should appear on that website, but I’m trying to take care of that, too.

Last Friday, I sent a letter to each person running for office in Anderson County requesting the information that will appear on that website.

Included with the letter was a two-page candidate biographical information form, the same form that was sent to all candidates running for office in May’s primary election.

In fact, the only candidates who did not receive my most recent mailing are the ones who returned their information sheets for the primary election.

Their information is already on our website, so there was no reason to ask for it again.

So, a message to the remaining candidates:

Please, sometime within the next week, take five or 10 minutes to fill out the information form. You can mail it back to me, drop it by our office, request a digital copy of the form for submission by e-mail or do what one very intelligent candidate has already done (she’s speedy, and that’s very much appreciated) and just e-mail me your answers — no form required.

It’s free to you and free to your constituents, so really, what do you have to lose?

Dear readers, please bear with me over the next little bit. The site, as it is now, is most definitely incomplete. But I will work diligently to get the information online as it filters in to me.

It is my hope that you will spend the next 48 days becoming educated voters, and it’s my job and my pleasure to help in that process.

Follow Shannon Brock at Twitter.com/ANewsSBrock.