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Just vote

With less than a week to go before B.C. residents head to the polls, many voters already know who they want to represent them in Victoria for the next four years.

With less than a week to go before B.C. residents head to the polls, many voters already know who they want to represent them in Victoria for the next four years.

In all likelihood, those people have already cast their ballot during advanced polling.

The ones who matter to the candidates now are the undecided voters — the ones who may yet be convinced they are the best option to serve as MLA for Langley and Langley East.

It’s up to them to convince us.

Beginning on page 15, we’ve given each of the nine candidates running for office in Langley a chance to state his or her case.

Rather than have them address specific issues, we asked them to identify what they consider to be the top three issues facing Langley and explain how they would address them.

By doing this, we felt, readers would get a better sense of where each candidate’s priorities lie and how they line up with their own values.

Granted, when given time to formulate answers, write, rewrite and consult with people in the party before supplying answers, the knowledge and ability of each candidate becomes a bit muddied.

It’s live, when they’re asked to speak off the cuff, that their qualifications become clear.

Four all-candidate meetings revealed that one or two don’t know where their party stands on a number of important issues and, more disappointing, had no personal view to share.

Others, meanwhile, are so polished it was a little hard to tell whether there was actually an answer to the question, ‘what will you do?’ in their response.

The observant reader will notice that the two Liberal candidates for Langley submitted the same answers, word for word, though each offered a bit more insight in their answers to additional questions we’ve posted online.

In Langley, that confidence is probably not misplaced — it is a community that has traditionally offered strong support for Liberal candidates.

Whether you want to see that tradition stand for another four years or you’re ready for change, it’s up to you to cast your ballot in that direction.

They’ve done their job.

Now it’s up to all of us to do ours — just vote.