• Register to vote. Circle election dates on your calendar.
• Get to know candidates and their campaign staff. Identify candidates whose positions closely match your own. Volunteer in their campaigns. There is plenty to do — phone banking, stuffing envelopes, hosting coffees, contributing money, putting up yard signs.
• Ask questions at candidates' forums.
• Host a forum at your church or civic club.
• Write letters to newspapers on issues that are important for candidates to consider.

During the election season, you will hear all sorts of claims by candidates. Some may even go so far as to claim to be the "Christian" candidate. Religious groups may put out scorecards that rank candidates on a series of issues. Remember:

• There are persons of faith on all sides of most issues. In the complexities of public affairs, there is seldom any single unambiguously "Christian" solution.
• The Church and individual Christians do not have the solutions to all the problems in society. We do need to learn from secular experts who understand technical aspects of challenging public issues. We also need to learn from various studies that our Assembly and other church bodies have produced. There are experts who are also persons of faith.
• Preparers of voters' guides often take a small number of carefully selected votes and/or positions as the basis for their presentation. Beware the bias that can result.
• It is important to have faith based values upon which to evaluate positions of candidates. However, those faith based values need to be broad so as to avoid turning the Bible and/or other statements of faith into inappropriate litmus tests. For example, a public official once said, "the moral test of government is how it treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the aged; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped." That is a helpful yardstick to hold up against welfare reform, tax policy, health care, etc. How does the policy impact the widows, orphans, and least of these?

Perhaps You Have Considered Running for Office. If so:

Do you have what many call, "a fire in the belly"? Do you just have to run for office? If the answer is yes:

• Assess your call to run. Check it out with family, friends, and others in your community whose opinion you respect. As you continue to assess your call, ask yourself, am I prepared to lose and can I ask others for money for myself?
• Once you decide to run, stick with the decision. Until you are elected to office no one sees you as an elected official.
• Develop a plan that will involve other people. Presbyterians know how to form committees. The larger the jurisdiction you are running in, the more people you will need to help. You will need a treasurer and a finance committee early on. You will also need a campaign manager and a volunteer coordinator. Running in a large jurisdiction may necessitate hiring consultants and commissioning polls.
• Produce materials, including single sheet position papers, that outline who you are, why you are running, and where you stand on certain issues of the day. As you prepare your issue papers, indicate that you are open to compromise where there are gray areas. As voters are deciding on a candidate, most are drawn to persons with open minds and open doors.
• Become known and get people who will vote for you to the polls. Raising the favorable name recognition of a candidate and getting people who will vote for that candidate to the polls is the objective of a campaign. Your party can help you get lists of persons who are registered to vote as well as those who have voted in past elections. Part of your campaign plan will involve contacting voters by mail, media, in person, email, or by telephone.
• Paid advertisements are often expensive. Get to know local media, make yourself available for interviews and candidate forums, call talk shows, fill out newspaper surveys. This is free media. Again, depending upon the size of the jurisdiction, you may find yourself buying newspaper and/or other media advertisement. That is why you have to be able to ask others for money for yourself.