You may notice that we’re running political letters to the editor in this week’s issue — a change from past years, where we didn’t run those letters in the issues that would be on the newsstands Election Day. Because of our production cycle and Wednesday publication day, it was a policy that effectively cut off all political discussion in our pages more than a week before the actual Tuesday elections. This new policy is something that has been in the works ever since last November, when the deadline for political letters fell in mid-October, forcing us to inform many late letter writers that their opinions would never make it into print. It was then we realized we had a second option — run those letters online. What we found was the political discussion could continue through the week leading up to election, even though our print edition had already come out. And that got us thinking that, because our website gives us the opportunity to publish responses that may have missed the print deadline, we could extend that print deadline and still provide ample and fair rebuttal time. With our new policy, we are welcoming any political letters until 5 p.m. Monday, Nov. 3 — the day before Election Day. These will be posted at spotlightnews.com. The one thing we ask of you is that your responses be made as your own letters to the editor. We don’t allow people to comment on letters online because it’s too easy for anonymous statements to turn into a nasty free-for-all that goes nowhere. Instead, we encourage anyone who wants to pen a political letter to email it to us with their names and contact numbers, so we can call to verify the senders. Just because those letters won’t make it on our printed pages doesn’t mean we treat them any differently than if we were going to publish them — we still reserve the right to limit letters from individual writers, and we may edit for style or content. We’re fortunate that we can try this new policy out in this election climate. In even-numbered years, where fewer local seats are up for grabs, we find we receive fewer letters. So, this is the perfect time to see how well this policy will work. That way, when the next wave of local elections takes place in 2015, we’ll know what we’re facing. We hope you will take advantage of our new policy this year and keep the political discussion going until Election Day with your letters. You email them to [email protected]. We look forward to hearing from you right up to the eve of Election Day.