Soon, election season will be over. I don’t hate elections. I don’t hate politics. I don’t hate government. I don’t hate any of that. I’m an adult now, so I think we’re past that.

What I do hate, though, are political ads on television. What I don’t hate is that I won’t have to see them anymore, for a while at least.

Even if you’re not a TV person (I’m not) you’ve probably seen the ads.

It starts off with a bad, out of context photo of the opposing candidate with a gloomy-doomy voiceover telling you about all the hearsay things this candidate may have said. It attacks with damaging quotes said by others about the candidate, and then it begs the question: is this really who you want? Is this it? This guy? Who said this? And did that? That’s your guy? Jeez.

But it doesn’t end there. Within a few weeks, you’ll have the rebuttal about what’s maybe-but-possibly-but-also-totally-not-true, and how Candidate A is a liar for calling Candidate B a liar. Soon enough after that, you’ll see a rebuttal for a rebuttal. It’s a vicious cycle of bad TV, with all the familiar signs of schoolyard bickering.

Like I said, I don’t hate politics. I do my best to research prospective candidates, find who can do what for me and who might be the best person for the job. I’m a good guy, right?

I vote, so it doesn’t matter to me, but I can see how someone who doesn’t vote, or maybe is still unsure, could be turned off to voting all together as a result of being constantly bombarded by these ads.

Not too many of these ads actually tell you what these candidates are going to do for you, but more so, what the other guy can’t do.

To your average maybe-so-maybe-no voter, there’s a lot to take in.

Who to vote for, who’s running, running for what? Questions, so many questions, that these ads aren’t going to answer. Do these ads have to spell out in big block letters what’s going on to Johnny Uninformed? No, but Johnny hates seeing this stuff on his TV, and I’m with him, even if he doesn’t know what he’s watching.

Maybe it’s not all Johnny’s fault (it kind of is), but these ads really don’t do much to dispel the greedy, slimy stereotype that politicians have.

I try to give people (even politicians, who, contrary to popular belief, are people, too) the benefit of the doubt, but are these ads really helping anyone? Seems like just a waste of time.