How Newsday editorial board made endorsements

Newsday's editorial board met with 42 candidates to evaluate the records of the incumbents and the aspirations of the challengers. Endorsements for 2013 will continue through next week, both in the newspaper and online. Today we debut newsday.com/endorsements, a guide to our selections featuring video from our candidate interviews.

Before we could make our picks, however, we first had to choose among the more than 100 races on Long Island that will be found on local ballots -- from town boards to highway superintendents to county legislators. We chose elections that will affect the largest numbers of voters, and most often those races without incumbents or those which are being tightly contested, with results not overwhelmingly predetermined by party registration.