Sharpen your pencils or make sure you have a pen with ink. Your ballots are about to arrive in the mail, and we urge all voters in Union County to vote.

The Nov. 3 election stands less than a month away. Voters pamphlets are arriving this week. Tuesday, Oct. 13, is the last day to register to vote. And the state starts mailing ballots just a day later. So it’s time for voters to evaluate candidates and make informed decisions.

The most interesting local race in the May primary was the three-way contest for Union County sheriff. Incumbent Boyd Rasmussen bailed out of the Nov. 3 vote in light of an ethics investigation, leaving his deputy Cody Bowen the only name on the ballot for the office. But former deputy Bill Miller is running a hot write-in campaign in spite of finishing third back in the spring.

But the most interesting local race this November is for the La Grande City Council. Voters in Union County’s biggest town could overturn the council.

Four of the seven council seats as well as the mayor are up for election. Just one council seat — Position 6 — is open. And these races are heating up after the Union County Republican Central Committee displayed a letter on its website questioning whether the Democrats who serve on the council are fit to hold office only because they were Democrats.

Judging from the letters to the editor we’ve been getting about this, folks in town are not keen on partisan politics butting into the race for nonpartisan roles of public servants.

The lone county-wide measure seeks to mandate the county board of commissioners to meet three times a year to discuss promoting the county’s interest in relocating Idaho’s border to include Union County. While the likelihood of a new state of Greater Idaho seems so unlikely as to verge on the fantastic, if voters want to hold public meetings about it, so be it.

On the national level, of course, the general election packs a load of implications. There is little ambiguity regarding views on President Donald Trump or his challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden. (Their national debate would have made even Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley Jr. wince.) During the past 20 years, we’ve heard pundits and politicos tout elections as key for the future — and all elections are — but none can match the intensity and controversy Nov. 3 portends.

The last time a sitting president and a challenger presented such stark contrasts may have been 1984, when Republican President Ronald Reagan trounced Democrat Walter Mondale. It’s hard to image Mondale calling Reagan a “clown” during a national debate, yet there are parallels between these campaigns almost four decades apart.

Polls showed Mondale whopping Reagan, just as polls show Biden with comfortable margins over Trump. But on election night, Reagan won in a landslide.

Of course, Trump is no Reagan, and Biden is not nearly as passive on his approach as Mondale.

Making informed political decisions are not as easy as they used to be. The internet and social media rely on algorithms that allow us to form echo chambers and allow others to manipulate us. It may take a cultural shift to resurrect reasoned dialogue and thoughtful debate.

That’s a shame. Democracy is built on the notion of compromise and the give-and-take of different interests fighting for supremacy. A winner-takes-all formula isn’t a functional method long term for a democracy. There’s a solid argument that Oregon’s state government is a prime example of that.

The Founders, though, appeared to believe in the ultimate reason of “the people,” and that is why voting is much more than a simple choice on a ballot. Voting is a symbol that, in the end, the average American is capable of making the right choice when necessary.

Voting is a constitutional right and an American rite, and we have an obligation to community and country to exercise that right and participate in the rite of voting. Voting also is a way we make a difference. So vote.