Breaking from recent tradition, The Marysville Globe and Arlington Times will be making endorsements in the upcoming elections.

While we’d like to be able to do all of the races which will appear on the ballot, this year we’ll be focusing on the races with “local” ties. Those include the races for U.S. Representative, District 2; 10th District Senator and Representative, Position 2; 39th District Representative, Position 2; and Superior Court Judge, Position 6.

We’ve scheduled meetings for each race and invited all the candidates to attend. During the endorsement meetings each candidate will be given a three-minute opening statement. That will be followed by the editorial board asking the candidates to answer the same 6-10 questions, followed by a three-minute closing statement by each candidate. The editorial board includes Stuart Chernis, editor and publisher; Scott Frank, managing editor; Sarah Arney, The Times news editor; and reporters Kirk Boxleitner and Tom Corrigan. Three or four of the editorial board members will be sitting in on each endorsement meeting.

We plan to ask a variety of questions focusing on the issues that impact residents of north Snohomish County — growth, transportation, the economy, affordable housing and more. We also want to know what you would ask the candidates so we are encouraging the public to submit their questions to us, and we’ll include some of them in our process. If you have a question for a particular race, or a particular candidate, send them to sfrank@marysvilleglobe.com. Send them in as soon as possible as our endorsement meetings will be conducted over the next couple of weeks.

Based on the quick and enthusiastic responses by many of the candidates we invited to the endorsement meetings, it’s clear they value the voters of north Snohomish County and we look forward to what will be a very interesting, and challenging, endorsement process.

And don’t forget, we want you to get involved in this process. Send us your questions for the candidates and we’ll incorporate as many of them as we can. Send them to sfrank@marysvilleglobe.com, and we’ll have the candidates anwer your questions.

To contact a member of The Marysville Globe/Arlington Times editorial board — Stuart Chernis or Scott Frank — e-mail forum@marysvilleglobe.com.