Today, however, we are making an exception and asking you, in the race for Halifax County commissioner, to please consider voting for the three winners in the May Democratic primary or the two Republican challengers in November.

In light of news we broke Tuesday — two people joining the fray to run as write-in candidates — we feel it is important for the voters of Halifax County to send a message to James Mills and Michael Hawkins that they won't tolerate an attempt to throw a wrench in a finely-tuned machine, that machine being the May primary and the open filing of the two Republican candidates.

Hawkins already ran in the May primary, challenging incumbent Clerk of Court Becky Spragins. He flatly lost and is now trying to run for another office.

Mills is a habitual runner. Since 1984 he has tried, most times unsuccessfully, to run for namely the county school board and more recently the state House of Representatives.

He did successfully become mayor of Scotland Neck before losing.

We believe this is an attempt to hijack the results of the May primary, where a majority of Halifax County voters said no to the school merger issue. Even the two Republicans who filed to run in November are merger opponents.

If Hawkins and Mills were indeed sincere about running they would have done like those in the May primary did — file so their names would appear on the ballot and campaign throughout the county to make their beliefs known.

Instead, they are throwing their names in at the last-minute only in an attempt to imbed the November general election in a deep mire.

We believe the voters in Halifax County are savvy enough to see through the ruse and we hope when we send our questions out to the candidates next month Hawkins and Mills will provide us answers that will make us write a retraction to this editorial.

Our intuition, however, tells us that we are right because otherwise they would have went through the proper channels before the May primary to assure their names were clearly visible on the ballot.

Because we believe wholeheartedly their intentions are to run for the sake of running, we are breaking our tradition of not endorsing candidates and encouraging voters to see through the charade and not endorse the write-ins — Editor