When you want to decide who to vote for in a particular election -- like the governor’s race that’s on our doorstep -- probably the absolute worst way to get information about the candidates is through television or radio ads.

There is probably nothing more inaccurate of deceitful than these ads which are created by campaigns, parties and various support groups. I’m not eliminating any political party from these schemes, but I have one of the most obvious examples of this kind of bull that is being perpetrated by the Wisconsin Republican Party on behalf of Gov. Scott Walker.

The first thing to do is listen to the ad here.

The thing to pay attention to is when the announcer says, "Let’s hear what Mary Burke herself said about her performance heading the agency in charge promoting and creating Wisconsin jobs."

It’s obvious that we are all expecting to hear a soundbite from Mary Burke herself. Sure enough.

Her voice comes through loud and clear saying, "We aren’t out there selling the state and attracting the companies." And then it ends.

The big problem here is that it’s not Mary Burke doing the talking. It’s an actor. And if you don’t believe me, look at the script that was as released by the Wisconsin GOP in a press release here. You will notice that after the Burke statement the script says, "(ACTOR VOICE)."

The other thing is that the quote the ad uses is totally misleading. In nearly all the exit interview stories as she left as commerce secretary, she talked about the difficulty of going after companies because Wisconsin did not commit nearly enough resources to getting that job done.

On top of this is the website paid for by the state Republican Party. The URL is www.maryburke.com. Again, you’d expect to see a campaign site for the Burke campaign. But instead it’s a website that contains a litany of bad stuff about Burke. It looks just like a regular campaign website but includes such arousing news items as "Elitist East Coast Liberal to Campaign with Mary Burke." It refers to a campaign appearance by Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Now, I have made a bunch of calls to Brad Courtney, the head of the state GOP, Jesse Dougherty, who is the GOP press guy and Joe Fadness, the executive director of the party. After two and a half days of calling and leaving messages, Dougherty called me back but said he saw nothing wrong with anything. I asked him if he thought it would be fair if the situation was reversed and someone impersonated Scott Walker and somebody built a website under his name. Dougherty didn’t have an answer.

Let me say that the ad is an egregious example of the most devious, disingenuous and disgusting kinds of political ads that fatten the wallets of radio and television stations, provide absolutely no real information to voters and are remarkably effective in getting a candidate elected.

Neither party is particularly concerned about fairness when it comes to getting their candidate elected, but this stuff by the Republicans takes me back to the days of Richard Nixon and his plumbers who were tasked with all manner of dirty tricks. They say there is honor among thieves, but that doesn’t apply to political campaigns.

It’s a political truism that broadcast advertising works, especially in a close election, much like what we expect in our gubernatorial election Nov. 4. And as much as I’d like to blame the candidates and their supporters for this kind of junk, it’s really not their fault.

It’s ours.

There is a small percentage of voters, perhaps as little as five percent, who will decide this election. Everybody else is already committed to one candidate or the other. The ads do at least two things.

One is that they can help energize supportive voters so they actually vote. The other is that they can be persuasive for the unpersuaded.

There is just one solution to this whole thing. Let’s ban political ads on television and radio broadcasting. The broadcast industry would fight it tooth and nail because an election is a license for the stations to print money. Opposition would also come from a wide variety of organizations who would scream about their right to support any candidate or issue and their freedom of speech.

The only winners if we did that would be the voters, and as has been proved over and over, nobody really cares about us.