Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has decided that the voting chops of 11 Nebraska counties (and millions of other Americans) casting their ballots by mail are legit, let’s get on with this election already. 

And at long last, too. Today’s political campaigns use modern technologies to employ well-worn strategies such as innuendo, character assassination, oversimplification, cherry-picking and a host of other fallacies of logic. In the “vote for me” sweepstakes, we have been exposed to lies from little white ones to bald-faced biggies.

Even (or in some instances especially) those of us in the chattering class grow weary of the world of overworked ways in which we currently conduct political campaigns. True, we do “get what we vote for.” I wonder sometimes, however, if we could do better in how we go about that.

This time around Nebraska’s hustings, we have spent an inordinate amount of time, energy and money on solving the nonexistent problems of the “who can” and the “how” of voting. Which is why the high court’s ruling on voting by mail was welcome news indeed.

The Supremes … well, not all of them … essentially said the post office is not — as the current administration and its adherents insist — a gatekeeper for who gets to cast a ballot or how our elections are run. Apparently that’s still the purview of the states according to the Constitution. You know, that old thing.

So on with the show, particularly in Boone, Cedar, Cherry, Clay, Dawes, Dixon, Garden, Knox, Merrick, Morrill and Stanton counties, where all the voting is done by mail. More people are voting there now, too. Go figure.

By the way, if you’re keeping score at home, mail-in ballots, once known as “absentee” voting, began in earnest during the Civil War when Union soldiers voted in their camps and field hospitals under the watchful eye of state election clerks or other state officials. Key word there being “state.”

In his book “The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States,” and reported in Time magazine, historian Alex Keyssar points out that in 17th-century Massachusetts, a man could vote absentee if he were otherwise occupied, say, defending his home against potential attack. During the Revolutionary War, soldiers could also vote while away from home.

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Another fixture of modern campaigning is the paid political television spot for which even casual TV viewers should fall to their knees and thank the deity of their choosing for both the mute button and the remote on which they find it. My particular market is awash in Ricketts/Osborn and Pillen/Walz ads, few of which I find either amusing or moving the debate needle, hence the consistent use of the aforementioned mute control.

Maybe I’m going at this all wrong. Maybe we should be rewarding such “negative” creativity. Perhaps we should give production value awards for ads that go after a candidate’s opponent with a certain flair. We could have categories such as “Worst Distorted Facial Expression,” “Most Dramatic Musical Accompaniment with a Breathless, Equally Dramatic Announcer,” “Baddest-Looking Bad Guys in the Background from Central Casting” or “Outstanding Achievement in Non Sequiturs, Hasty Generalizations and False Dichotomies.” 

For ads that tout a candidate’s own qualities, we could bestow the “Clean, Well-Lighted Place the World Will Be If You Elect Me” award. 

Please excuse the silliness. Mine. Not theirs. 

Truth is, even with the attack ads, the illogic, the meddling by those who have no standing to do so and the millions candidates spend to get our vote, a democratic horse race — even with way too much money and misinformation — is still a million miles farther on the right side of democratic norms. The planet already has too many examples where humans surely yearn to have a say, a voice, a vote, even if the television is filled with bad commercials and social media festooned with lies.

Full disclosure: I actually look forward to parts of these campaigns, to see what people are thinking, talking about and eventually buying. Because in a democracy, that is what politics comes down to … or at least it should. Do I have a superior idea, a workable solution, a better mousetrap? And if I do, can I articulate it? Sell it? 

We can think much of it silly or dislike how it is done. Just leave how we vote about it alone.

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