First and foremost, I would like to thank those of you who responded to my desperate plea for help last Sunday on what to do with the growing number of letters about the presidential primary – specifically, the vote-for and don’t-vote-for letters.

If the majority of the letters are as thoughtful as your responses, then I won’t have much to complain about.

As you recall, I listed four possible options in how to deal with these letters – some of which are genuine expressions of a voter’s feelings, while others are no doubt orchestrated or at least encouraged by a particular campaign:

1. Publish as many of these letters as possible from local readers.

2. Publish a representative sampling of them, being careful not to be redundant.

3. The same as Option 2, but designate a weekly spot for them on Page B-3 of The Sunday Telegraph, the one day of the week when we have a second editorial page.

4. Hit the delete key.

So, what was the verdict?

All told, I heard back from 31 people – 19 who e-mailed me directly and 12 who posted messages after I published the column on The Editor’s Blog (http://blogs.nashuatelegraph.com/the_editors_blog) on our Web site.

Not everyone commented specifically on the four options, but among those who did, No. 3 – publish them once a week on the second Sunday page – came out a relatively narrow winner among those who stated a preference.

Interestingly, “don’t publish them at all because they are worthless” came in a close second.

For those of you keeping score, the actual vote was 11-7 in favor of the third option, although three people indicated they could live with either Option 3 or 4.

In your own words:

“I think I’d come down somewhere between options 1 and 3,” wrote Bill Chisolm of Nashua. “The eyes of the nation (are) on N.H., so every crackpot whack job with a bone to pick is going to be firing letters to every publication in the state. For that reason, I’d limit letters to those from local people, or those who have some sort of reasonable connection to the area.”

“If you are going to publish letters from readers either in support of or objecting to a particular presidential candidate’s position(s), you must ensure that there is a balanced representation,” wrote Jon Kaplan of Nashua. “For example, for every letter you publish that is in support of Hillary Clinton’s health-care plan, there should be one published on the same page that has the opposite opinion.”

Again, not everyone saw value in the publication of these letters.

“I am a big fan of letters to the editor and I want to know what other people think and what their opinions are,” wrote Bob Scheifele of Nashua. “But not when it comes to politics. . . . In my opinion, they are a waste of paper.”

“Here’s my advice on letters on candidates: Delete them all, be it local, state or national elections,” wrote Fred Teeboom, who as an alderman-at-large knows a thing or two about being a candidate. “These self-serving letters add nothing, absolutely nothing, to the understanding of candidates for your readers. Forget wasting ink on page B-3. Help save some trees!”

(Hmm, maybe I should keep that in mind the next time Fred’s running for office.)

Given all that, I’m going to proceed with Option 3. You will find the first set of primary-related letters on the opposite page.

I’m also going to take your advice to give priority to those letters that have something meaningful to say besides “Vote for candidate X because I think he/she is swell.” I’m not going to be beholden to running them on a first-come, first-served basis, either. In short, the more substantive the letter, the more likely it will be published.

So, we’ll give this approach a shot, at least for the next month or so. Who knows? The way things are going with the national primary calendar, that may be all the time we have left before it’s time to vote.

Nick Pappas is editorial page editor at The Telegraph. He can be reached at 594-6505 or npappas@nashuatelegraph.com.