Breaking news: LoCO Elections is back! 

That’s right, the special seasonal Lost Coast Outpost sub-site makes its re-entrance onto the scene as of right now. This is the place on the Internet where you, the Outpost readership, may ask questions of local candidates for office, and also (hopefully) use their profile pages as a sort of one-stop-shop directory on the most high-profile races when you’re doing your own research, before heading to the ballot box.

What’s on tap this election season? City offices! Special districts! School boards! Etc.! As you may recall, at the local level all the countywide offices are handled during the June primary season, unless any of them go to a runoff, which this year they did not. So here in California we use the November ballot to get to all those sub-county offices, the jobs that people get paid little or nothing to do.

We’ve set up this round of LoCO Elections with the races for Eureka mayor, Eureka City Council and Arcata City Council, and we’re very gratified because a whole bunch of candidates in those races have already signed up and are ready to take your questions.

Two of them — mayoral candidate Anil Dwivedi and Jeff Leonard, city council candidate from the Fifth Ward — have, in fact, already answered the question that I seeded for them, which is the same question we asked in Friday’s poll. That is: “Is Eureka a Big Town or a Small City?” (Still time to vote!)

Want to read Dwivedi’s and Leonard’s answers to that question? Head on over to LoCO Elections now!

Want to ask your own question of Dwivedi or Leonard or any of the other candidates for elected office in Eureka and Arcata? You can do that, too! Here’s a step-by-step explainer.

Now, you may be asking: Why only Eureka and Arcata? Why not Ferndale, or the Eureka City Schools Board, or the Harbor District, or the Humboldt Community Services District? They’re all up for election too! And here’s our answer to why not them, or not yet.

Number one: The other big city in this election — Fortuna — has four candidates running for four seats, meaning that it’s probably not going to be much of an election.

Number two: We have had limited success in recruiting candidates from these smaller races and jurisdictions to participate in LoCO Elections. But we’ll tell ya what — if you are a candidate for office on the November ballot, and if you pledge to participate in answering questions for the masses, we will add you and your competitors to the LoCO Elections site. Just drop me a line at hank@lostcoastoutpost.com and we’ll start getting you set up.

OK, I think that’s all! Once again, here is LoCO Elections. Happy election season!