This election year, we voters are faced with an overabundance of information about candidates and elections.

From the myriad traditional news sources to the online community of amateur reporters and commentators, there is no shortage of information available to the responsible, concerned citizen.

I however, have opted for a very different approach. This year, my votes and political inclinations will be determined by one thing and one thing only: television attack ads.

The ads cost millions of dollars each, so they must be credible. Plus I have always viewed voting as a choice between the lesser of two evils. What better way to plumb the depths of such evil than by watching ads that actually suggest certain candidates may, in fact, be evil?

Take, for example, Wisconsin’s 8th House District. A recent ad attacking the Democratic challenger, Steve Kagan, accuses the physician and father of having been associated with child rapist and murderer, David Spanbauer.

What the ad doesn’t say is that Kagan once hired an attorney who also happened to have defended Spanbauer years ago, thus Kagan approves of child rape. For my part, I’m sold. I don’t want anyone so closely associated with rape running this country. Now, e-mailing congressional pages about masturbating” that’s a different story.

Next up, a titillating ad being run in New York State against Democratic Congressional candidate Michael Arcuri by – who else? – the Republican National Committee. The ad shows Arcuri leering at the silhouette of a dancing woman who says, “Hi, sexy. You’ve reached the live, one-on-one fantasy line.”

According to the ad, Arcuri called a sex-chat line while in office and charged the bill to tax-payers.

In fact, someone from his office was trying to reach the state Department of Criminal Justice which happens to have the same seven-digit extension, and immediately hung up when he realized he had called the wrong number.

The total charge to taxpayers was $1.25. However, as a values-oriented voter I cannot allow such insignificant “facts” to get in the way of my outrage. If we elect congressmen who call phone-sex lines, what is to stop them from making advances on young, defenseless congressional pages? Oops, too late.

The best attack ad yet, however, is being run in Tennessee by – you guessed it – the Republican National Committee. The ad features a scantily clad white woman winking at the camera and asking Democratic candidate Harold Ford Jr., a black man, to “call me.”

While the ad has been roundly criticized for its racial overtones, it also accuses Ford of accepting money from the pornography industry and of favoring terrorists. For the RNC, this is just a throw-back to the race-baiting tactics that helped them scare whitey into voting their way since the Civil War.

While only time will tell if Tennessee voters are willing to be swayed by fears of interracial relationships, I for one am taking no chances. If Ford is taking money from known pornographers, what will stop congressmen from taking money from all kinds of illegal sources?

Oh, wait, the Republican leadership has already beat them to that one as well.

I have learned a lot about politics this year. By ignoring inconvenient “facts,” the candidates’ actual records and the current state of the country and obtaining my information solely from attack ads, I have discovered that the Democratic party is primarily made up of rapists, perverts and otherwise scurrilous characters.

Thank Jesus we still have the Republicans to save us from the evil Democrats.

Send comments to Jon Bosscher at [email protected].