For decades, the Tampa Bay Times Editorial Board has made political recommendations during election season, and we have done so again this year.

Our goal is to help readers make good decisions. Voters have to make choices, so we try to help clarify the differences between opposing candidates or what’s at stake with constitutional amendments and other ballot measures. Even if readers disagree with our recommendations, the process bolsters healthy political conversation. We recommended 17 Democrats and 13 Republicans across 30 partisan races, as well as candidates in six non-partisan contests. We also weighed in on 17 state and local ballot referendums. You can read all the recommendations here.

This brings us to the recent controversies at the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times. According to reports, the Post and Times editorial boards intended to make recommendations for the presidential contest. They were prepared to endorse Kamala Harris but didn’t publish a recommendation when the owners of those news organizations blocked the decisions. We won’t rehash all the details here, but the last-minute intervention led to resignations in protest and many questions about interference in the recommendations process.

The Tampa Bay Times Editorial Board also did not make a recommendation for president. But there’s a big difference: We never planned to. Before the primary and general election cycles, the Times Editorial Board discussed where best to apply our time, listed all the races in which we intended to make recommendations and then published that list on the Times website. That list first appeared in July and then updated again in early October for the general election. The list never included the race for president and dozens of other contests. The decision was made months ago.

As always, we had to balance the dozens of races, amendments and referendums in the Tampa Bay area against our limited Editorial Board resources. We thoroughly research our recommendations. Candidates fill out questionnaires with information about their backgrounds, experience and views on policy issues. We check financial disclosures for anomalies and often look at driving records, lawsuits, bankruptcies and criminal histories. We ask incumbents why they voted a certain way on important bills. We also watch debates and candidate forums. We sometimes talk to the candidate’s bosses or former employees. And we offer to interview nearly every candidate, and most take us up on the offer.

All that research takes time. The board used to make recommendations in many more races than we did in the current election. County commission in Citrus County? The board had that covered. School board in Hernando? Yes, that too. We used to weigh in on judicial retentions and Safety Harbor City Council. But not anymore. And this year, our shrinking resources forced us to make more choices about which races to cover.

This cycle, we focused mainly on local races in Pinellas and Hillsborough counties, where most of our readers live. We tried to select the contests where our readers would need the most help.

For us, that meant school board, city council, county commission, circuit and county judge and state legislature contests, as well as a handful of U.S. House races and a few other Tampa Bay area matchups. We also covered state and local amendments and referendums — often the decisions readers tell us they need the most help making. We cannot think of a single reader who has told the Editorial Board over the past election cycle that they needed our help deciding on how to vote for president. Not one.

Some readers wish we would weigh in on the Trump-Harris race, but not because they haven’t decided who to support. They want another voice added to their team’s side. We get that. We also get calls every cycle about writing more recommendations for races in Pasco and Manatee counties. But to do all the necessary research, we must make choices. We aren’t saying that St. Petersburg City Council is a more critical job than the U.S. president. Of course not. Our choices were based on where our readers needed us most and how much impact our recommendation could have on a race.

Not everyone thinks that a newspaper’s editorial board should make political recommendations. Some have stopped doing them entirely. Others have scaled back, just like the Times Editorial Board. Valid arguments exist on both sides of that debate, but we believe the recommendations contribute to healthy political dialogue. And given how many readers ask when the recommendations will appear, a lot of you find them valuable.

Local news organizations constantly decide how to use resources for the most effect. For the Times Editorial Board, the choice not to make a recommendation for president — and dozens of other races — was one of those decisions. No one told us we couldn’t. No one killed our presidential recommendation after it was written. The fact is, we never wrote one and never intended to.