It’s still almost two weeks before Election Day on Nov. 3, but the stupendous turnout of voters casting ballots early — due to concerns about the Covid-19 pandemic and new laws that make it so that no excuses for voting “absentee” need to be provided — have made the usual ritual of endorsements by your local newspaper almost completely moot. That said, this for all who’ve not yet voted.

Never in our 30 year history of doing such things has the choice been more obvious for us to endorse in a presidential race. Our choice of former vice-president Joe Biden has never been easier, nor more important for us to publicly pronounce. Mr. Biden represents a solid, reliable choice for a national return to normalcy from the standpoint of a preponderance of both parties. He’s proven it through his long political career, and while there are reasons for almost everyone to be critical of some of the things he’d done, it’s all been done with a dignified love of country and the values of democracy. In that sense, he’s the polar opposite of the man who is the most dangerous threat to our national way of life on many levels. For U.S. President, Joe Biden.

For U.S. Senate and U.S. Representative from the 8th District, we are proud and honored to once again endorse our Democratic incumbents. For U.S. Senate and House, Mark Warner and Donald S. Beyer, Jr.

For the City of Falls Church’s special election to fill a seat vacated on the Falls Church City Council for a one-year unexpired term, we’ve been impressed by all three candidates who’ve qualified for the ballot this fall. For whomever doesn’t win, we sincerely urge such persons to stay active in the community and to seek service on a board or commission and to run again for a seat on the Council in just a year from now when three seats for full four-year terms will be up for grabs. The two young, lesser-experienced candidates are products of the Falls Church School System and bring intelligent, profound moral imperatives that this year’s national Black Lives Matter and other expressions of a new zeal for cultural equality and reckoning represent. While Debbie Hiscott is a more experienced long-time member of the community and proven effective advocate for its schools, she also shares the same values. For Falls Church City Council vacant seat, Debbie Hiscott.

For the Constitutional Amendment to establish a mechanism for a more bipartisan and objective redistricting process, the measure on the ballot was the product of an earlier time in Richmond when the need to avoid a badly-gerrymandered redistricting process was shared by a nearly-evenly split state legislature. Since then, however, the Democrats have won decisive margins in Richmond and now feel risking the process to a bi-partisan approach might yet invariably be tilted to a GOP majority. For the Constitutional Amendment No. 1, Vote No.