Let’s Be Truly Informed Voters: An Alternative to the Current System

I’ve had it with the mudslinging. It seems to me that election campaigns have turned into great big mudslinging contests. Campaigns are no longer based on what a candidate stands for, but rather on defacing the opponents, and this, my friends, are what we are to base our votes on. In today’s society, most people are not truly informed. They don’t go down and dig through public records to learn how the candidates voted on the issues in the past. Instead, they rely on the media to inform them and base their voting choices on information gained there. At least half of this information isn’t even true, or has been twisted by the opposing party to show the candidate in unfavorable light, but most of us aren’t going to run down to the courthouse or even do a Google search to check the facts. I don’t think our votes should be based on where a candidate keeps his money, who he sleeps with, the color of his skin, his/her gender, or if he was busted for drunk driving as a teen. Our votes should be based on a candidate’s true opinions on the issues, but even when they air a commercial that expresses a candidate’s beliefs instead of trying to smear the other guy we can’t believe it, because politicians all say what they think we want to hear, regardless of how they really feel.
I propose that we change the whole campaign system, where the only thing they are allowed to hand out, mail out or otherwise advertise is their previous voting records, which is what we, as informed voters, should be basing on voting choices on. Do away with the expensive campaign trail for all candidates, since they are a huge waste of money anyway and just provide the facts, with each party supplying the voting records for their own candidates only, in order to truly inform the public. The best we can hope for is to reasonably predict how they will vote on future issues by how they have voted on issues in the past, and overhauling the whole campaign system is the only way I see for that to happen.