Next week’s May 28 Simi Valley Acorn will include the last letters we’ll print concerning the June 8 primary election.

There won’t be any county election-related letters in the June 4 edition.

The reason is fairness.

Daily newspapers rarely print election-related letters after their Sunday editions, which appear two days before an election. This allows for a correction of the record in a daily’s Monday edition if a seriouly false allegation was printed in its Sunday paper.

For us in this election cycle, the window for a correction is June 4. If a damaging remark were to be printed in the June 4 edition, it couldn’t be corrected before Election Day.

To support candidates they like and to belittle political opponents, some writers get loose with the truth.

It’s especially tempting for some letter writers to go ballistic negatively in the days just before an election, especially if their candidate’s back is against the wall.

A well-timed bombshell can affect the outcome of an election.

That’s why newspapers must be leery of outrageous allegations in the days leading up to an election.

Twenty years ago, in a city not far from Simi Valley, opponents of one council member claimed a week before the election that he had misused city funds. The allegation wasn’t true, but it took an audit to prove it.

If The Acorn had run the story, we couldn’t have corrected the record until the Thursday after Election Day. Because we were skeptical about the timing of the story and knew we couldn’t correct the record before Election Day, the story didn’t run in The Acorn .

We didn’t print the story, and the allegation turned out to be false.

The deadline for letters about the election of June 8 and all other letters for next week is Tuesday at noon.

We want all our readers to have their say on this election, just as long as they play by the rules of fairness.