The deadline for election-related letters to the editor is 5 p.m. Monday, Oct. 28. That includes endorsement letters and anything related to town, village, county, state or federal races — either for or against certain candidates, parties or issues — or New York’s Proposition 1.

That’s eight days before Election Day, but we need the time to go through all the submissions and find room to print them.

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Provide credible sources

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We print guidelines for opinion writers in every issue, yet many letter writers forget one critical rule: “Writers must provide credible sources to speed fact-checking.” This has been a particular problem during this year’s election cycle. Many letters that require fact-checking — due to questionable claims — do not include credible sources, and we don’t have the staff to check facts for all these unsourced letters.

Even if we were fully staffed in the newsroom — which we are currently not (down one editor) — the amount of time it takes to fact-check the letters with questionable claims would take up most of our work day and we wouldn’t have time to produce a newspaper.

We sincerely feel bad that there has been a delay in printing these letters that need sources and fact-checking because your opinions are important, but we don’t want to spread misinformation.

Lastly, we are grateful that you continue to embrace the opinion page as your own.

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Letter guidelines

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– Length limits: 500 words for a letter, 1,000 words for a guest commentary, 250 words for a writer’s second or more opinion piece in a single month.

– Letters must be original.

– Letters must be factually accurate, and writers must provide credible sources to speed fact-checking.

– The use of generative AI to write letters — without citation — is prohibited. Answers from questions posed to AI must be placed in quotes and cited — just like any other source.

– We do not publish anonymous letters, personal attacks against private citizens, candidacy announcements, consumer complaints, plagiarized material or form letters from organized letter-writing campaigns.

– Writer must provide their full name, town of residence and phone number (for verification only).