Nickels v. Mallahan. Who's better? Who knows?

I don't have column at PubliCola (yet!), so heads-up on this post, it's a straight-up editorial.

Is there any piece of political advice more useless to voters than a dual endorsement?

Voters don't get to vote for more than one candidate. They have to decide who they support and fill in the bubble beside that person's name, and they rely on publications with a history of covering elections to help them do that. So when a publication like the Seattle Times endorses multiple candidates in a single race, they're essentially saying, "We think choosing is too hard, so we're throwing up our hands. You should too."

This year, the Times endorsed multiple candidates in seven out of eleven races, including the three-way matchup for city council position 6 (incumbent Nick Licata and challenger Jessie Israel);  the hotly contested race for Seattle mayor (incumbent Greg Nickels and challenger Joe Mallahan); and the tight race for county executive (Eastsiders Fred Jarrett and Ross Hunter). The Times also dual-endorsed in city council Position 8, two Seattle School Board races, and a race for Kirkland City Council.

With the exception of Hunter and Jarrett, the Times' dual-endorsed candidates generally have little in common, in terms of ideology, political experience, or personality.

When you can't settle on one candidate out of three—when, in fact, you advise people that there's no reason to choose either of two very different candidates over one another, and that toppling an incumbent is the equivalent of keeping him—you're suggesting that elections don't matter, that who's in office is irrelevant, and that voters might as well just flip a coin.

Editorial boards hold themselves up as arbiters of public opinion—groups of men and women who've taken a long, tough look at the candidates, done research and gone through one-on-one interviews that ordinary citizens lack the time or resources to do, and come to a considered decision about which people would do the best job in each office on the ballot. When endorsing organizations refuse to make a choice, they're taking a lazy shortcut—one that voters themselves aren't afforded.