Here’s what you can expect from Flatwater this election season

The Flatwater Free Press spends a lot of time chasing down things that matter to Nebraskans. We investigate. We explain. We ask questions that sometimes make people uncomfortable. We brag up Nebraskans doing great things and highlight untold stories of our place. And we try to make the state a little easier to understand.

An election is a pretty good test of all of that.

So, as we head toward November, I thought it might be useful to tell you what you can expect from us.

First, there’s our voter guide, which goes live today.

We’ve built these guides before, and they have become some of the most-used things we produce. Hundreds of thousands of Nebraskans have turned to them for information about candidates, races, voting rules and the mechanics of actually getting a ballot cast.

This year’s guide walks you through statewide races, legislative races and other contests across Nebraska. You can look up the races on your particular ballot, find information about the candidates and get answers to the practical questions that can make voting surprisingly confusing.

We’re also linking to Civic Nebraska’s Ballot Builder, which gives you another way to see what’s on your ballot and organize the information you need before you vote.

But the guide is only one part of our election coverage.

This year, we have Margery Beck, our first-ever elections reporter, in partnership with our friends at VoteBeat. Margery’s role is to spend a lot of time asking questions that go beyond who is ahead in a poll or who said what at a campaign event. Instead, she’ll focus on the brass tacks of democracy.

How does Nebraska count votes?

What happens to a mail-in ballot after you put it in the mailbox?

What happens if there’s a problem with your ballot?

How does the system actually work?

Those are important questions, too. Maybe especially important.

We’ll also be producing short video explainers about the ballot measures Nebraskans will be asked to consider. Some of those measures are still winding their way through the courts, so we’ll wait until we know exactly what voters will see before we tell you what they would do. Then we’ll explain them as clearly as we can.

We’re a nonprofit newsroom. We don’t have shareholders demanding a certain number of clicks. We don’t have a candidate to root for or a party to please.

We have a mission: to uncover truth, amplify diverse voices and enrich life in Nebraska.

An election is a chance to do all three.

Our job isn’t to tell you what to think or how to vote. It’s to give you good information and let you take it from there.

So that’s what you can expect from us over the next several weeks.

A voter guide. An elections reporter. Explanations. Accountability. A whole newsroom paying attention.

And, we hope, a useful place to turn when you have a question about what is happening in Nebraska.

There are a lot of ways to cover an election.

We’re going to spend ours trying to help Nebraskans understand it.