The primaries are nearly here, but our broke-ass state can’t foot the bill for printing the voters guide. (It costs $1.3 million to print those things.) But an e-mail from Secretary of State Sam Reed says all of the candidate statements are online.

“There is plenty of good, solid, unfiltered information,” out there, he says. So if you want to research before you vote—or find Dino Rossi’s phone number—you can go to My Vote, the TVW’s Video Voter’s Guide, and your county's election website. Or you can just ask the Stranger Election Control Board, which announced its endorsements yesterday.

A few counties are producing a primary voters guide on their own. The state government usually doesn't publish voters guides during the primaries, but they made an exception in 2008, the first primary which used the new voter-approved top-two system. "In case there was any confusion with the new system," says Amanda Meyer at the Secretary of State's office. But this time, the legislature just doesn't have the money.

Meyer says that although she didn't have a sense of how many people have access to the Internet in the state. "We would be happy to print a pamphlet if the legislature gives us the money, but it's out of our hand," she says. "When times are hard, something has to be cut."

If you ask me, the Internet is great and all, but there's quite a number of people out there—including senior citizens—who rely on printed ballot guides as their primary source of information. Lawmakers have not given up on paper election guides completely—the general election voter’s pamphlet is expected to be mailed out in October.

UPDATE: King County is producing its own voters guide, says Meyer at the Secretary of State's office. But other counties, you're SOL.