Take those mailers and make a bonfire of them

I would never urge anyone not to vote, but I've been reviewing campaign mailers from candidates for county, legislative and congressional races and this conclusion is inescapable: If you base your decision on political advertising it may be worse than not voting at all.

Keep in mind that this conclusion applies to both major parties and to nearly every candidate. For that reason, I'm not naming specific individuals.

That said, here's one staggering example: A mailer to voters in one House district doesn't mention the candidate it supports. It merely cites its target, an incumbent, contending that the representative "was nowhere to be found when Springfield politicians slammed our families with a 32 percent tax increase."

The mailer was paid for by the Democratic Party of Illinois.

Whatever your position on the tax hike itself, the measure was written, sponsored and promoted entirely by Democrats. The veto override that made the tax hike law was supported by 61 of 67 Democrats in the House. If "our families" were "slammed by a 32 percent tax increase," it was overwhelmingly the Democratic Party that did the slamming.

A more common practice of mailers is the manufacture of demons to whom they can pretend a candidate's fealty on the barest of evidence. Indeed, if you didn't know better, you would think there are only two people running for every office in Illinois - Donald Trump and Mike Madigan.

Democratic mailers conjure a sinister partnership between nearly every Republican and what they almost universally describe as President Trump's "extreme agenda." Republican mailers summon laughably diabolical images of Democrats paying homage to Speaker Madigan.

Such negativity is overwhelming. In mailing after mailing, the approach is to severely distort some action or statement and use a clever charade of superscripts and footnotes to provide a show of authenticity. If this sort of thing sways you, you should be ashamed.

But of course, candidates and campaigns assume you will be swayed. The practice has become widespread because politicians seem to think it works. Maybe they're right, but if so, I'm more inclined to think it's because these methods turn reasonable voters against the ugliness of politics altogether.

We can be better than this.

If, as people so often say, you truly despise political manipulation and are committed to voting for the candidate you think will do the best job, do yourself a favor. Throw the campaign mailers directly into the trash. Then, go to the polls and cast a ballot you can be proud of.</group><group id="5304C6E9-D55E-4681-8BDB-4F35DF73057C" type="seoLabels"><seoLabels></seoLabels></group></idf>