Who’s sick of this presidential election? It seems as though both the Democratic and Republican campaigns for the presidency have gone above and beyond the typical heckling, mud-slinging and name-calling inherent to any race. Dishonorable service records have been substantiated with documents of an unknown origin. Unconfirmed secret meetings with the North Vietnamese add to the list of circulating accusations from veteran groups linked to the election. Claims of a flip-flopping voting record, allegations of a corrupt alliance with the Saudis and an endless array of negative, over-dramatized ads distorting countless facts take precedence above a focus on future policies and outlooks.

So goes the game of politics. Claiming such an election to be a new phenomenon would be ignoring the corrupt bargains, the Watergates and myriad likewise incidents defining our country’s political history. Yet the fact remains that while our leaders at least claim to hold the values and moral integrity necessary for their positions of power, the competition to acquire these political offices has traditionally been marked with remarkably amoral behavior.

This behavior doesn’t stop at the national level. Instead, it trickles down through state political offices, local agencies and even to the individual constituents that the presidential candidates will eventually serve. It is this behavior of the individual citizen that exhibits the furthest-reaching affects of a negative smear campaign. With the guidance of the attacks on commercials, the false accusations on the national news and the endless bickering between the two candidates, people are simply following suit in their own local communities.

Incidents of vandals ruining Bush-Cheney signs are reported all over Wisconsin. A sign in Washburn Country was sprayed with obscenities, while a sign in a front yard in Sheboygan County was run over by a pickup truck. Local Republicans in Portage Country organized late-night surveillances after a high number of reported vandalisms, eventually turning in someone to the local police. In Louisiana’s Lafayette County, “Kerry for President” signs were set on fire and replaced with pro-Bush messages on the windows and door of the residency. Such occurrences are not isolated but are instead common throughout areas of the country.

The unruly actions of political activists go beyond the destruction of yard signs and relatively harmless vandalizing. A GOP office in Northern Wisconsin was broken into last year and trashed with spray paint, graffiti and a mess of shirts and hats strewn about. Washington’s state headquarters for the Bush re-election campaign was broken into last week. The vandals smashed a window and stole three computers allegedly containing important information about the 72-hour-plan to be implemented in swing states during the last three days of the campaign and other important documents about Bush’s get-out-the-vote plan. Republicans are certainly anything but innocent when discussing past break-ins. Holding claims to the most infamous political break-in at the Watergate Hotel back in 1972 election, party activists also burglarized a Democratic Party finance office in Manhattan in 2000. Like vandalizing, break-ins have become one more typical component of the modern election.

The result of the modern election is that ordinary individuals are intimidated by fear of destroyed property, a graffiti-filled house or a burglarized office. Granted, this intimidation is less today than at previous times in our history because of changes in the electoral process, such as the implementation of the secret ballot. Yet when our country is supposed to be a model of democracy and individuals cannot express a personal view through a sign or aggregate such views by means of a political office without fear of backlash, our elections are clearly anything but ideal and democratic. Wouldn’t it be nice that instead of attacking each other like the bratty children of the electoral system in which we’ve been primed, individuals could demonstrate to their leaders how a truly democratic election should be run? Maybe the day we respect each other’s views and approach an election with maturity and integrity, our leaders will finally follow suit.

Jamie Shookman ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in English and political science.