"Shut up and do your job; and make sure it's the job WE expect you to do."

There is a subset of people walking this planet that think, when it comes to politics, some people should be seen and not heard. "Shut up and do your job" is their cumulative refrain when athletes, actors, singers, musicians, or basically anyone who has a platform that is not in politics uses that platform to weigh in on politics. It's as if they think certain people are only allowed to be single-faceted or that it's somehow an abuse to use the platform for any purpose other than to talk about that which we expect them to talk about. It's a ridiculously narrowminded view of people. We are feeling that acutely here at Melrose Votes. For some unfathomable reason people got the impression that because we built a website, we should not share our thoughts; that our site was supposed to be unbiased, neutral, fair, and balanced despite literally nowhere on the site saying as much, and multiple places...including right up front and center... saying we have opinions and will share them. I guess some of our more anxious visitors must have skipped over that part to get right to the juicy candidate info.

So, in the interest of appealing to the slowest common denominator, we will remove our color-coded rankings for our preferences for candidates. We hope the simplicity will alleviate the triggering that some of you might experience when you don't read things carefully. We will not, however, be removing our recommendation to vote YES on Question 1, A,B,C. The cuts from the failed override last year are demonstrably real. Everyone in the Melrose government knows we need it as do the folks running the schools and those responsible for making sure our first responders have adequate facilities. We will not sacrifice truth for the appearance of impartiality or to pander to a group of people that can't even bother to show up to a forum to discuss their reasons for voting no.

We will also not be removing anything we feel deserves a Red Flag. In our opinion these are issues that transcend politics, and political parties, and need to be considered, discussed, and/or investigated. Ignoring issues like this, and electing a candidate despite them (unless satisfactorily deliberated) leads to what we are currently witnessing: namely the erosion of democracy in the longest continuously governing constitutional republic on earth.