We (all) want your vote

If you do only one good thing next week, vote

In the early days of print journalism, the only reason many newspapers existed was to help elect certain politicians or parties. Voting day was the only news that really mattered.

That’s what gave birth to The Hamilton Spectator in the spring of 1846, when representatives of the Conservative Party asked Robert Smiley if he would give it a try — and lent him the money to start.

If you worked hard, made the right decisions and perhaps espoused popular political views, you could turn it into a very good business, as Smiley and his successors did. They all got rich.

Editors were more chummy with politicians then, at least some of them, and they decided over whisky and cigars what was best for everyone: which political leaders would be endorsed, which projects would get built, and how the city, the province or the nation would be developed.

Fortunately, many of those old power structures have crumbled, and most modern news organizations try to balance their coverage of elections and candidates. For better or worse, some still proudly align themselves with political parties, but most, like this one, have long since abandoned any affiliation, despite occasional criticisms to the contrary.

Many still endorse candidates, as does The Spectator on occasion, but not this election.

Meanwhile, many modern news organizations and journalists tend toward more progressive ideas. We’ve been at it long enough, have developed a world view, and studied the issues to know change is inevitable and resisting it is counterproductive.

Of course, all news organizations are accused of taking sides, having biases and promoting a particular agenda. But when that criticism generally comes from all corners, it’s usually a good sign of a job well done, at least in a modern journalistic sense.

Still, most news organizations take elections seriously. We feel it is our duty to get people out to vote, and to help them make an informed decision. Given that fewer than half of Hamiltonians will vote Monday, it’s an ongoing challenge.

That’s why The Spectator in print and online is dominated by election news: stories about the issues, the candidates, the ridings, the race ....

We don’t know everything, but we know this stuff better than most, because our journalists have been attending the meetings, reading the reports, studying the data, interviewing the players and cutting through the propaganda and the mumbojumbo for the past four years.

It’s true, social media have changed the nature of elections, and it’s increasingly difficult to see through all the fiction to find the facts in a modern world, but again that’s what bona fide journalists are for.

Finally, in an era when the ability to vote simply doesn’t exist in many parts of the world, is downright dangerous in some, and made increasingly difficult in others including the United States, we owe it to ourselves, our communities and democracy itself to take advantage of this hard-fought right and cast a ballot.

Make your vote count, and make it as informed as possible.