This is considered an “off” election year. But our aim is to turn you “on” as a voter.

In 2020, two-thirds of Americans voted, the largest percentage since 1908. Last year, at 64 percent, was the second-highest turnout. Both times, the presidency was at stake in our highly polarized society.

Mid-term elections, on even years like presidential elections, bring out fewer voters than presidential election years but more than odd-numbered years because Congressional seats are at stake. This year, only a third of Americans are expected to vote.

Going forward, we New Yorkers will have our local elections held on even years so they are paired with state and national elections.

Earlier this month, our state’s top court ended a two-year legal battle by unanimously upholding the 2023 law that will move town and county elections outside of New York City to even-numbered years.

The hope is that this will increase voter turnout in local elections.

So 2025 may be the last year we will write on this page, as we have so many times before, on the importance of local elections.

At a time when most of us are caught up in the maelstrom of national politics, it is essential to reflect on the government that most affects our day-to-day lives. 

Will your town be developed in ways you approve of? Will your property taxes increase or decrease? Will your town share services or facilities with the county? Will your community offer affordable housing?

All these issues, and many more, will be decided, in part, by who is elected to local offices.

Over the years, we have covered several local elections that were tied or decided by just one or two votes. On a local scale, a single vote can make the difference between who wins and who loses.

The Altamont Enterprise does not endorse candidates. We believe your opinion, as a voter, matters as much as ours. Instead, we go to the effort to ask questions of every candidate for every race in each town we cover — Guilderland, New Scotland, Berne, Knox, Westerlo, and Rensselaerville.

The questions for candidates are based on issues important to the place and to the post he or she is running in and for.

Last week, our voters’ guide covered candidates in Guilderland and New Scotland. Although every race in Guilderland is uncontested this year, in the interest of serving democracy, we still posed questions and were heartened that every Guilderland candidate responded.

This week is our Hilltown voters’ guide, featuring responses from candidates in Berne, Knox, Rensselaerville, and Westerlo.

You can read what the candidates want to do and see how their views line up with your own. You can also read dozens and dozens of election letters to understand your neighbors’ views of the candidates and their opinions on the issues.

Our opinion pages are a meeting ground, a place in our increasingly polarized society where readers can seek to understand views that may be different from their own.

All of the profiles and the letters are available on our website — www.AltamontEnterprise.com — so, if you missed the print version, or the newspaper went out with the trash or was used in the birdcage, you can still be an informed voter.

Each letter is fact-checked, with an editor’s note at the bottom to explain any important background, discrepancies, or close personal or political relationships.

For decades, we’ve channeled the words of our late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan when Enterprise readers submit letters for publication with incorrect facts: You’re entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts, we say.

Moynihan was a member of the National Commission on Social Security Reform in 1983 when he wrote an opinion piece for The Washington Post, stating, “There is a center in American politics. It can govern. The commission is just an example of what can be done. First, get your facts straight. Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts. Second, decide to live with the facts. Third, resolve to surmount them. Because, fourth, what is at stake is our capacity to govern.”

Moynihan himself was drawing from Bernard Baruch, the statesman and financier who chaired the War Industries Board during World War I and then advised President Woodrow Wilson during the Paris Peace Conference.

During World War II, Baruch advised President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on manufacturing war supplies, reducing production time. When the war was over, Baruch represented the United States on the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission, advocating a plan for international control of atomic energy that was rejected by the Soviet Union.

“Every man has the right to an opinion but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts,” said Baruch. “Nor, above all, to persist in errors as to facts.”

There are no such things as “alternative facts.” Something is true or untrue — or perhaps unknown.

Persisting in factual errors undermines our government. We can’t live with the facts and surmount them if we don’t accept them.

We are at a critical juncture in our nation’s history where more than half of Americans think our democracy is not working. We should not accept a two-thirds voter turnout as a record.

Rather, we should remember the hard-fought battles women, Blacks, and other minorities have waged for decades to win the right to vote. 

In 2021, driven mostly by lies that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen, state legislatures passed “an unprecedented number of laws that limited access to voting,” according to the Brennan Center for Justice, which tracks voting laws.

Thirty-two laws were passed in 19 states in 2021 to restrict voting. And the legislation continues. As of  Oct. 6 this year, 29 laws restricting voting have been passed in 16 states.

The federal Voting Rights Act became law 60 years ago. After Jimmie Lee Jackson, a 26-year-old Army veteran, was shot by Alabama State Troopers on Feb. 18, 1965, John Lewis, Martin Luther King, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference organized a march to go from Selma to Montgomery.

The result was Bloody Sunday — the brutal horror on Edmund Pettus Bridge that moved a nation and a president. Lewis was among those gravely injured, with a fractured skull.

Two days later, Lyndon B. Johnson said a federal law was being drafted to protect voting rights.

“Every American citizen must have an equal right to vote,” Johnson told Congress. “There is no reason which can excuse the denial of that right.”

The United States Supreme Court 12 years ago gutted the Voting Rights Act, doing away with the preclearance system that had required states and localities with a history of voting discrimination to get certification in advance that any election changes would not be discriminatory.

The formula was invalidated in a 5-to-4 Supreme Court decision as being out of date. 

The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in her dissent, “Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”

Four years ago on this page we called for our representatives to pass the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act; although the House has passed them both, they have stalled in the Senate.

We have little hope now of getting our umbrella back. The storm is here and the rains are heavy. Our democracy is dissolving from within.

What you must do as a citizen of the United States — while you still can — is vote on Nov. 4.