Nov 1, 2012 1 min read

In view of all the negative political ads, I would like to make a suggestion: when casting a ballot, instead of voting for a candidate, voters cast votes against candidates.Since the current ads are so negative that you can’t tell what the candidate is for (or sometimes even which candidate the ad is actually about), it would make sense to carry this to the logical conclusion of actually voting against candidates.There are other advantages: polls might become even more hopelessly confusing and would be abandoned completely; all candidates could declare themselves winners, since the one who got the most negative votes would be a kind of winner and the one with the least negative votes would be the real winner, a win-win situation of a sort. It might even lead to a new phrase in the political lexicon of the Electoral College: Winner (most negative votes!) Take None.All this would go a long way to bringing a much needed harmony between campaigning and voting.Ted FlickingerWashington