By Elliott Brack
Editor and publisher, GwinnettForum
APRIL 14, 2020 | With the Georgia primary now scheduled to be held on June 9, it gives GwinnettForum a little more time to make contact with candidates who have opposition in the Georgia primary.
Actually, we’ve made pretty good progress this year, having talked to 73 candidates so far, in order to get to know them. It also helps to determine by their responses which candidate GwinnettForum will endorse in each race in the primary and nonpartisan judicial races. As much as we can tell, we still have 31 more to talk with for the June 19 voting. We will then talk to those who did not have opposition in the primary, but have an “other party” opponent for the General Election.
With the corona pandemic in force, we took an alternate route for many of the interviews with candidates this year. We are now inviting candidates to talk with us not in person, as we have done previously, but through the amazing “Zoom” method. We have found this rather simple to use, both for us, and for the candidates. We simply send an email to the candidate who we scheduled for a particular time. The candidate has to click the computer and easily install Zoom, which sends a message to us saying the candidate is ready to talk. Then we click an “Admit” button, and Zoom! There’s the candidate looking at me, and me looking at the candidate, plus hearing one another!
You can see how this benefits the candidate, since they don’t have to come to our Peachtree Corners office. And it makes the process much faster to us, since we can interact more easily with candidates.
After candidates talk with us, that allows us to send the candidates six questions for them to answer, each in no more than 100 words, and return to us. Then we take the answers as they are returned to us, without any editing on our part, and will post them to our GwinnettForum website. Our readers will have three weeks before the election to read what each candidate says about each question, and perhaps even make up their minds on which candidate to support.
If you are early voting, let me suggest that you wait until after May 19 to vote. That’s the date GwinnettForum will endorse candidates and will post the answers of the candidates on our websites.
With so many candidates this election season, that will mean a lot of reading to see the comments of the candidates on the ballot. Be pleased: while Gwinnett has seven state senators, and 17 members of the House of Representatives, you will only have to read the answer from your own district’s senator or representative! That makes it a little easier on each voter.
GwinnettForum has been endorsing candidates since 2008, when we first got mad that the Atlanta newspaper was no longer endorsing. But after a week of stewing, we realized that many people say that GwinnettForum is “something like a newspaper” online. We don’t think of it that way, since we don’t attempt to cover the entire news waterfront. (No basketball game, or weddings, or comics.)
So, we thought, if people think of us this way, maybe we can endorse. The first year we interviewed 69 people in person. The most we have interviewed was 95 in one year. With so many candidates, we may break that record this year.
So that’s why to expect in the coming weeks. GwinnettForum looks upon this venture as a public service to voters in Gwinnett, which they will find at no place else.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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