“Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.”

Thomas Jefferson penned those words 225 years ago. For the past eight years, one group has dedicated itself to making sure the people of Gloucester and Mathews counties were well informed when it came to matters of their own government—the Middle Peninsula League of Voters.

The league served a vital role in our community, organizing candidate forums and other events, getting local candidates to answer questionnaires on pressing issues of the day and then providing those answers to this newspaper, which we dutifully included on our pages the week before each election. The league also held engaging luncheon programs on a number of other local issues not directly tied to an upcoming vote.

Sadly, it is no more. This week, after watching their numbers continue to dwindle (al...