Last chance to submit your election letters

One week to go.

By midnight Friday, your chance to submit an electionrelated letter to the editor and have it run by Nov. 3 will have passed.

As noted in the space before, we’re cutting off acceptance for election-related letters Oct. 23 in hopes we’ll be able to publish them all before Election Day.

Not unlike the early response around the nation for voting, many of you didn’t take long to submit your one election-related letter. We’ve already published well over 100 and have around 25 waiting in the queue.

(About a half-dozen of you have already tried to sneak in a second or even a third. Nice try.)

To help give everybody a fair shake, we tighten up our letter rules every election season, and todaywe’re re-printing our rules a final time. Here goes:

First and foremost: We print only one election-related letter to the editor per reader. That’s not one letter per person per ballot item, but one election-related letter, period.

The cutoff date for receiving letters is Friday, Oct. 23. We do that in hopes we can actually get everyone’s in by Election Day. There will be no exceptions to theOct. 23 cutoff date. Other rules:

• Our regular letters policy can be seen at the bottomof the printed page or online. We don’t print anonymous letters to the editor. We require first and last names, addresses and phone numbers. We don’t print the address and phone number but use it to verify identity. We don’t print purported facts that can’t be independently verified. When using facts, cite a source. We don’t print letters that require substantial research to verify.

• Also, let’s keep personal insults out of this. Criticize a candidate’s record or positions all you want. Name-calling and demeaning comments (especially about your fellow letter writers) aren’t going to win anybody over, but they might keep your letter out of the paper.

• We don’t allowletters from candidates or campaign managers, unless it’s in response to a news story or editorial specifically about them. They have ample ways to get their message out, including advertising. And if the letter is a response to a news story or editorial, candidates get to do this only once during this period — same as any other letter writer.

• With rare exceptions, we don’t print election letters from people outside of our print circulation area, which is Butte, Glenn and Tehama counties.

• All letters must be 250 words or fewer. We sometimes cut letters to the editor, even if they are under the limit. For example, if somebody says “Vote for Jane Doe” several times in a letter, secondary instances will be cut.

• Even though the limit on letters is 250words, you don’t need to use every last one. More people will read your letter if it’s short. Get to the point.

• If we get letters that appear to be part of a letter-writing campaign, in which writers hit on the same talking points, we’ll run a small sampling of them but not all. Be original.

• One last time, our cutoff date for receiving letters is Friday, Oct. 23. Our goal is to run them all before Election Day and not drop any late bombshells.

• On a similar note, we won’t be running any “guest commentaries” until after Election Day. If you’ve got something to say, say it in a letter of 250 words or less, just like everybody else.

• Just 18 days until Election Day. Questions? Email letters@ chicoer.com.