Is anyone else ready for the elections to be over? This year has been particularly bad. There are 2 types of ads in particular that annoy me.

#1 – Political Mail

I went to the post office on Thursday and had received 17 political pamphlets or mailers in the mail. There is not a single day that goes by that there’s not at least 2-3, but 17!

Very few of these mailers are even helpful. They’re rarely about what a particular politician thinks, and much more often about why their opponent is bad. I don’t care what you think of your opponent, what do you stand for?

Our post office has removed all the garbage cans. It happened a few weeks after all these mailers started showing up. I’m sure it’s because the garbages fill up so fast it’s hard to keep ahead of it all.

When I get home with the mailers, I don’t even read them, they just go straight into my garbage can. If they’re running on a platform of environmental conservation, they sure are wasting a lot of resources and money in printing that could be used elsewhere.

#2 Political Ads Online

These include online and on my TV, which these days is also online. I think, because they are always tracking what we do online, they know a few things about us. Where we live, what we look at, what matters to us, and how we would probably vote.

Consequently, almost every single ad that I see lately is an ad for or against one of Alaska’s senate seats. While I do want to be informed, I am more interested in what they will do, who they are, and what kind of character they have, not what they think of their opponent.

Probably most of the ads are not thought up by the individual, but rather by someone in their campaign or even the party, some from sponsors and what not. But they have all become exhausting and I skip as many as I can and the rest just get muted. Even if these ads have relevant information, there’s been too many for me to even want to sift through them for good information.

It is good to be informed, and there are great ways to get your message out there. I feel like just searching for the individual and seeing what each one believes, as well as listening in to some of the debates, going to town hall meetings, things of that nature. Voting is important, and it’s a right we should all exercise. But, I’ll be glad when this campaign season is over!

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