Sink or Swim:

Primary election is June 3

Our Sunday edition of The Observer will feature complete coverage of the primary electoral candidates. As you have noticed in the past eight weeks, we have allowed the candidates their 200 words “in the sun,” so they could explain why you should elect them. Some also chose to run their own campaign ads.

We provided general information on the seats open for grabs, so you would know who was running against each other for a specific seat of office.

Our articles on Sunday will further clairfy political candidate’s positions and platforms for their districts. Hopefully this information will help you make your choices when you go out to the polls on Tuesday, Election Day.

In the May 25 edition of The Observer, the city ran a list of polling stations and locations, which are listed on pages 26-28.

As Thomas Jefferson recommends, “Should things go wrong at any time, the people will set them to rights by the peaceable exercise of their elective rights.”

Samuel Adams also gave good advice.

He talked about personal responsibility to make sure you were choosing the right candidate, not to please, but to vote as a solemn trust to your country.

“Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote that he is not making a present or a compliment to please an individual,” wrote Samuel Adams in his book, The Writings of Samuel Adams, “or at least that he ought not so to do; but that he is executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country.”

At a recent Rotary meeting, Mayor Tom Swisstack encouraged service members to think about starting a program where children would learn how to vote by doing it at school.

Daniel Webster had a similar idea. He wrote in his book, The Works of Daniel Webster:

“Impress upon children the truth that the exercise of the elective franchise is a social duty of as solemn a nature as man can be called to perform; that a man may not innocently trifle with his vote; that every elector is a trustee as well for others as himself and that every measure he supports has an important bearing on the interests of others as well as on his own.”

Not a bad idea.

Why not allow children to be active in their community at a young age? We could experience a “voting generation.”

Now, there’s a thought.