Editor’s Note

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This morning’s Editorial, including the editor’s recommendations for voters making choices Tuesday in the state election, appears in the special Voter’s Guide in this morning’s print edition on pages 21-24, 38, 43 and online via a link at the top of the home page. The Voter’s Guide includes a sample ballot, descriptions of ballot questions, interviews with candidates for Dukes County sheriff, explanations of voting procedures for election to the Martha’s Vineyard Commission, and other helpful information for voters.

Editorial recommendations or endorsements are common among newspapers, but not universal. Some newspapers shun the practice, which they know will certainly irritate some of the publication’s readers. Others make such recommendations because they are driven by party politics and party allegiances. Many do it on the old-fashioned belief that the newspaper has several responsibilities to the community it serves, and one of those is to declare itself — that is, to make the editor’s judgments known to its customers and readers, especially on issues that affect them. And what issue, local, regional, national, or global, does not these days?

The latter is the reason why The Times editor offers recommendations. We’re under no illusion that readers, in wholesale and enthusiastic numbers, will be guided in their decision-making by the suggestions we publish, but of course, we hope that some will.