Well, the election is over and some folks are happy while some are sad. Some are beside themselves convinced that the world, or at least the state, is coming to an end. Could be, but I suspect things will keep ticking along with some good things happening and some not so good things happening. My hope is that the good things outweigh the bad and I bet they will because they always have.

I found this election season very troubling. The negative campaign tactics seem to be getting worse and I worry that they will continue to downgrade the process. It seems that tolerance for the views of others has pretty much disappeared.

I’m a registered Republican and my views are pretty conservative, but I enjoy a conversation with someone with Democrat, liberal beliefs. I also vote for individual candidates, including a Democrat and an Independent, not just a certain party line.

More and more, it seems that if one goes against the party, they are ostracized and all members of the party are considered to be of the mindset that the opposite party has created.

The population is getting older here in Maine and that is putting a strain on our healthcare system and insurances to cover those folks. I’m not against healthcare for all; I just want to know how we’re going to pay for it. I’m taxed pretty much to the max right now, so rather than just vote for something that’s good, I’d like to know how we’re going to pay for doing this additional good.

If that makes me a bad person and deserving of all the awful names, then I guess that’s the way it is.

People all over seem so relieved that the election is over, when an election should be an exciting time. It should be a time where we have discussions and find out what our candidates are all about; instead, it’s turned into a mudslinging brawl. And it’s not just the candidates. Voters go for the negative. Terms like moron and idiot are used all the time.

While I may not agree with some people holding political office, I don’t consider many of them morons or idiots. Is there the slimmest chance that people whose political views are opposite of ours are just normal everyday people who see things differently than we do?

Could that be, or are they all wicked, evil people who hate everything that is good and right and will stoop to any level to destroy the world as we know it?

Reality doesn’t exist. Reality is what we perceive. I heard that several years ago and wondered about it for some time, but now I believe that it is true. Events happen and some people see them one way while others see them another. Both believe that what they see is real. And it is to them.

I saw a Facebook post from a person encouraging people to vote for a Democrat candidate because the candidate vowed to get the big money out of politics. The candidate had spent about $1.5 million on the campaign at that point. How does that resonate? A Republican candidate for U.S. Senate slammed an opponent for bringing national party heavy hitters into Maine to campaign for them; yet, it was OK when they did it. 

See? The whole thing is crazy and it’s up to us to stop it.

The people who create these negative ad campaigns could care less who gets elected. They have absolutely no skin in the game. If some public relations agency is well known and is considered an expert in the field, candidates and political action committees will hire them based on their reputation and then give them free rein to say whatever they like. That should stop. The candidates should take full responsibility for any political ads that favor them. If PACs and other groups don’t like that, they can get a different candidate.

It’s my hope that going forward, instead of whining about who got elected from either party, people would go to work to find upstanding candidates whom they can support in the next election and focus on telling the voters why their candidate is the best person for the job, not everything they hate about the person doing the job now.

As long as we voters tolerate this kind of campaigning, we are, in fact, endorsing it. Until that stops, nothing is going to change. I vowed that I would not vote for any candidate that was involved in a negative campaign. Since I don’t watch TV and listen to radio from another state, it came down to social media and mail. I stood by my word.