Our rules for election season

The calendar is winding through the middle of April toward May, which means election season is in full swing. If you had any doubt, you can look around at the yard signs that are beginning to pop up, the advertisements that are showing up and the election notices and stories that are popping up in our paper. That will continue through the election as we do all we can to help you make an informed choice when you cast your ballot in June.
We do have some house rules we follow for election season, and we figure we will lay those out for the uninitiated. For those of you who are candidates, you will especially want to read this thoroughly.
When it comes to candidate stories, we do our level best to treat everyone the same in the story. That means, we will try to give everyone even space. No, it won’t be exact. Some of you write more, some of you write less. Those who write a lot may have some cut. Those of you who write less will have less space than the others. But we don’t play favorites and will always strive to have a level playing field with our candidate profiles. Nobody is under any obligation to fill out our questionniare if they aren’t comfortable with our rules.
Candidates shouldn’t rely solely on our story to get their message out. Many of you will have yard signs, mailers, etc., but we also encourage you to place an advertisement to get your message out. This can be done by calling our advertising salesperson, Kate Najacht. She would be happy to help you out. She can be reached at 605-440-1248.
Everyone is allowed one free candidacy announcement, so feel free to take advantage of that opportunity. Again, those are subject to editing depending on length and content. You may also have supporters write letters to the editor on your behalf, but those are treated as paid advertising and are billed as such. You’ll know those letters when you see them, because we denote as much at the end of the letter.
Letters are generally cut off with our May 20 issue, unless a May 27 letter says absolutely nothing about another candidate or insinuates anything about something any governmental body or candidate has voted for, done, etc. That is because allowing such a letter the last Wednesday before the election does not allow for time to respond. So, any letters/ads that last week (May 27) can only say vote for me/this person. No mention of anything else.
By law, any display ad that is placed for someone must have on it who paid for the ad and a physical address of that person or entity that paid for the ad. So if you place an ad, we will always ask for that information when the ad is placed. All political advertising must be prepaid. We do not bill for political advertising.
We hope everyone keeps it clean, and we hope everyone understands our rules and why they are in place. We salute everyone running for office and wish them the best of luck. It’s great to see democracy in action! Election day will be here before you know it.