Editorial
Super Tuesday

Tuesday morning, the doors of Westminster Elementary and John R. Briggs will open for voters to come and help select the next Democrat and Republican nominees for president.

This year, Massachusetts voters will get to go to the ballot box on Super Tuesday with voters in over 20 other states, to determine where about half of the Democratic support will go and roughly 40 percent of the Republican support.

In the Democratic nomination race a candidate will need 2,025 delegates to win. So far according to the Associated Press' tallies, Sen. Hillary Clinton has 249 delegates, Sen. Barack Obama has 167 and former Sen. John Edwards has 58.

In the Republican nomination race, a candidate will need 1,191 delegates to win. So far according to the Associated Press' tallies, Sen. John McCain has 93 delegates, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has 59 delegates, and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has 40.

Republican voters in Maine will assign their 21 delegates today within their caucus.

It is hard as a local paper to endorse any candidate running on a federal level. The small towns in Massachusetts do not appear to be the place for candidates to spend their time conducting town meeting forums or shaking hands in the coffee shops.

What is clear is issues such as illegal immigration, the economy, the war in Iraq and terrorism do affect our daily lives. These are issues that each of us needs to take a moment, determine our stand on and then match our vote to the candidate that best matches those stances.

The endorsement this paper will give is to making a choice, and vote on Tuesday. It is not as simple as saying, "This just a primary, I will vote when it gets to be the general election." The point of the primary is not only to determine who will run in the general election but who will be the leader of each political party.