The site's been a little slow lately because we're working on our candidate ratings, which we'll be rolling out later this week.

Sticking with our commitment to be a more objective and balanced source of news (yep, this "liberal" site is the site that got to the bottom of Jay Inslee's charade about transferring $1.2 million from his congressional campaign without honoring state campaign limits), we're going to do things differently this year than we've done them in the past. In other words, we're not going to tell you who to vote for or how to vote.

Inspired by the even-keeled Municipal League's candidate evaluations, where they rate candidates on skill, experience, and policy acumen rather than on ideology—and issue their now revered (and coveted) assessments ( "Outstanding" "Very Good" "Good" "Adequate" and "Not Qualified"), we've been digging into candidate resumes, doing interviews (still doing them), and will publish our own take on the candidates.

We're grading the candidates on: Resume; Knowledge of the Issues; and Their To-Do List & Ability to Get it Done. And we'll also be issuing Bonus Points and Demerits.

As for non-candidate election season stuff, including, oh, you know, Ref. 1, we're going to cut through the campaign rhetoric on both sides to tell you  what this vote is actually about (and we don't mean the arcane language on the ballot), and then we'll break down the best and worst arguments on each side.

Stay tuned.

We will be bringing back ThinkTank this week—which took July off for summer vacation—and we've got a great one queued up. Watch for that on Wednesday.