The Frederick News-Post, Md., Andy Schotz column

Oct. 14—With the Nov. 8 general election less than a month away, there's still plenty more to come in The Frederick News-Post.

We are continuing to profile candidates for Maryland General Assembly and Congress races. We have been publishing those profiles for several weeks.

We have posted our podcast interviews with the two remaining candidates for Frederick County executive.

Our podcast interviews are nearly done with candidates for Frederick County Council. Summaries of the rest of those interviews, and links to them, will be published soon.

There will be more coverage of the contested races for sheriff and Frederick County Board of Education.

Our extensive voters' guide that we created for the primary will soon be updated to include only candidates running in the general election. It covers dozens of candidates for county, state and federal offices representing Frederick County. Watch for that in the coming days under the "Voters Guide" tab on our home page.

In this weekend's edition, also look for a voters guide compiled by the nonpartisan League of Women Voters of Frederick County. It has responses from candidates at the county, state and federal level, as well as information about voting.

Before the primary, the News-Post profiled candidates for county executive, County Council, school board and sheriff. You can find those stories and much more grouped together at www.fredericknewspost.com under "Topics," then "2022 Election Coverage."

Our podcast interviews with candidates are posted at www.fnppodcasts.com/politics.

Also still to come is more coverage of candidates and their views through public forums.

I was pleased to hear on Thursday that a forum for candidates for sheriff and school board is now planned for Monday at New Spires Arts Stages in Frederick, starting at 7 p.m. Hopefully, all of the candidates will be there to face the public and share their views.

Kudos to the Frederick County Conservative Club and WFMD for organizing that forum, and to groups across the county that have been holding many other candidate events. The League of Women Voters organized several online forums. Their efforts matter.

There is no shortage of ways for voters to learn about the people who seek to hold public office. We're providing several of those ways through our coverage.

We encourage the public to find as many sources as they can to help form their opinions. Democracy should be participatory.

More than 25,000 Frederick County residents had requested mail-in ballots as of Wednesday. Residents have until Nov. 1 to request one.

The Frederick County Board of Elections has received roughly 3,200 of those ballots back, meaning voting is underway.

I have heard from a few readers who urged us to run all of our election coverage before mail-in ballots went out, so the earliest voters had that full information, too.

On the other hand, I've found that many people don't start paying attention in earnest to elections until shortly before it's time to vote.

We've tried to strike the right balance, publishing many of our profiles before ballots went out but continuing our coverage right up to Election Day.

Whether you immerse yourself with information early or catch up on deadline, what matters most is that you vote.