Our effort to help voters become better informed before they go to the polls

What, if anything, can the Whitley County Detention Center do to help prevent inmates from re-offending once they are released from custody?

Mark White is Editor of The News Journal.

What can the sheriff’s department do, if anything, to better combat the drug problem in Whitley County?

Is county government effectively meeting the needs of Whitley County citizens and what are some improvements that can be put into place?

These are a handful of the questions that the News Journal recently posed to candidates running for different offices in the upcoming May 17 Primary Election.

The answers to these questions from our jailer, sheriff and magistrate candidates respectively will be appearing in upcoming editions of the News Journal between now and the May 17 Primary Election.

In an effort to help better inform voters, the News Journal recently sent out our election surveys/candidate questionnaires to candidates for sheriff, jailer, magistrate, PVA and constable as candidates in the remainder of the races in the May 17 primary are unopposed.

In past years, the News Journal has put the answers to all these questions together in one edition of the paper and usually in a special section.

This year we are doing a few things differently and spacing out our publication of those responses over the course of a few issues.

Constable candidate responses are slated to appear in the April 20 edition of the News Journal. Magistrate candidate responses are scheduled to appear in the April 27 edition. Jailer and PVA candidate responses are tentatively slated to appear in the May 4 edition. Sheriff candidate responses are slated to appear in the May 11 edition.

I highly encourage members of the public to read the responses to these questions and make informed decisions about who you are voting for rather than just voting for someone because they went to high school with your sister or go to church with your parents.

If we want better government, we have to elect better officials. In order to elect better officials, voters need to know where they stand on important issues and what ideas they have to improve things.

Please note that the News Journal only sent out questionnaires to candidates in contested races, which means that we didn’t send questionnaires to Second-District Magistrate Mondo Cima and Second-District Constable Ron “Bubba” Bowling, who are both unopposed.

If you are a candidate for magistrate or constable and you didn’t receive a candidate questionnaire/election survey from us for some reason, please contact me as soon as possible at my office (606) 528-9767 or by e-mail at mwhite@corbinnewsjournal.com, and we will get you one.

While myself or Dean Manning have been in contact with nearly every candidate directly through either e-mail, Facebook Messenger, telephone or text to verify that they have received our questionnaires, there are still a handful that I have not been able to reach directly to make sure they got what we sent. Questionnaires were e-mailed to all but two or three candidates, who we didn’t have e-mail addresses, for on April 1. We mailed out copies of the questionnaires to those candidates.

On April 9, copies of questionnaires were mailed out to four other candidates, who we hadn’t been able to reach directly or who had asked to have one mailed.

(Imagine herding a bunch of cats and you will have a pretty good idea of what it is like to try and get in touch with 33 candidates for public office…LOL.)

Another suggestion that I would make to voters is to try getting a hold of the candidates for office now while they are still campaigning and see if they answer their phones, or respond to your texts, e-mails and social media messages. If they don’t respond to your inquiries when they are candidates, then I highly doubt that they would do so either as elected officials.