So far, I have refrained from commenting on the upcoming election.

But, with it looming on the horizon, it is time to make some comments. However, these comments may not be what you were expecting.

I am not going to tell you who to vote for, especially for that top job of president. There are a couple of reasons I am going to refrain.

One is that I am pretty sure just about all of you who are going to vote already know who you are going to vote for, for president and vice president. Secondly, more than likely a whole lot of you have already voted. So I would just be wasting my time telling you why you should vote one way or the other.

And thirdly, you probably would not listen to anything I would say, or anything I would write.

So here are some other things to consider this election season.

When you do go to the polls, you are going to see a different set of ballots depending on where you live. Even here in Faribault County, there is a huge variety of ballots that are prepared. Oh, we will all have a ballot with nine choices for president and vice president. Yeah, you read that right, nine choices. Ten if you count the Write In space.

We will all have four choices for U.S. Senator, and a couple of choices for U.S. Congressman.

After that it gets tricky. If you live on the east side of the county, you have a choice for a state representative and if you are on the west side, you will see a different choice. If you live in a city or town, you will get choices for mayor and council. In the rural area there are some, but not all township office choices. Same thing for school districts. Depending on where you live your ballot could have choices for BEA or USC or also Maple River, GHEC and even JWP. Yeah, that’s right. A couple of folks will have Janesville-Waldorf-Pemberton school board choices on their Faribault County ballots.

Voters in the BEA District will see the question of building a new school on their ballot. Others in the county will not.

Some county residents will be voting for a county commissioner. There are three spots up for election and only residents in those three commissioner districts receive ballots with those races on them. One third of Blue Earth residents will be helping select a county commissioner, but the other two-thirds will not.

Complicated? You bet.

For many years counties would run sample ballots in the official county newspaper. That would be the Faribault County Register here in Faribault County. If the county ran a copy of all of the different ballots they have to create, it would be dozens of them. So they combined them into four sample ballots, usually, with state and federal races on one, all local races on two ballots and then the list of judges on another. So everyone would see all the cities and school districts candidates listed, even though they would not all appear on all ballots on election day.

Two years ago, that was the case with sample ballots. This year it is not. Counties no longer are required to run sample ballots. The only entities that are still required to run a sample ballot are school districts. Don’t ask me why, I do not know.

Here at the Register, we have been getting a lot of inquiries as to when we are going to run the sample ballots, or why have we not run them. Some folks ask if we forgot to do it.

We tell them we did not get them from the county, and that the county does not have to run them anymore.

What all the counties are required to run is the Notice of Election, which you can find on page 18 in the second section of this issue. It contains some election and voting info, and there are QR codes you can scan with your phone for further information.

I guess that is the new ‘modern’ way of doing things. But for many folks, they liked the ‘old’ way of doing it, which was read it in the local official county newspaper.

Personally, I wonder how many people will take the time to scan a QR code to find out what will be on the ballot they will see on Tuesday, Nov. 5. But then, how many people really study the issues and candidates before they go to the polls and vote. Every election I seem to hear from people who were surprised at how many choices and names were on the ballot when they went to vote. Like having nine names to choose from for president.

No matter. The important thing is to go and vote. It is your chance to help decide some very important things, on a national, state and local level.

Some of the contested races have a chance to be very close. So this year, your vote could make a big difference.