Well, it’s started.

We are having more than 200 candidates seeking local, state and national positions come into The Oakland Press over the next few weeks for an interview and to be video taped.

We’ve wasted no time after the long Labor Day holiday weekend, candidates began coming into the office today.

The information obtained will be put online and made available shortly through our website, www.theoaklandpress.com.

Scheduling and interviewing the candidates is a daunting task. Our main reporters will be doing profile videos on 30 to 40 candidates each.

This is something new for The Oakland Press. In the past we’ve always done profiles on the candidates but the video taping is new this year. Also, usually we don’t call in all of the candidates, opting, in many cases, to have the candidates submit written information on a form that we send to them.

Of course, there’s no guarantee that all of the candidates will agree to come into the office but each in the November election races that we’re covering will be offered that opportunity.

From the Opinion Page standpoint, an editorial board member will not be able to sit on all of the taping sessions, although we do plan to be present for some of the major races in our coverage area.

As in past years, we can’t endorse candidates in each race because, to be honest, there are just too many races and candidates. But we will try to do some endorsements, probably published in the latter part of October.

In my next blog, I’ll give you some of the behind the scenes logistics involved in doing endorsements. As readers, you see the final product — an endorsement article on the Opinion Page of The Oakland Press.

But there’s quite a bit of work involved.