The election reform I want to see is the ability to opt out of political ads

Regardless of the results on Election Day — or in the days ahead — there’s cause to celebrate: You’ve survived another season of soul-deadening election campaign messaging.

You’ve won back your boundaries and sanity, if only for a short while.

No more pamphlets and mailers. No more emails pleading, “Will you rush an urgent $3 donation” to a candidate.

No more text messages exhorting you to help get out the vote for one party or another.

And no more TV ads that vacillate between saccharine self-promotion of one candidate or character assassination of the other.

Talk about lowering the bar on civics, to say nothing of human decency.

It’d be forgivable if the totality of the efforts amounted to some payoff, some revelation. On a door-hanger advertisement, one candidate in my legislative district lists among her top priorities as upholding the U.S. and Arizona constitutions and strengthening adherence to the rule of law.

You don’t say.

On a mailer, a mayoral hopeful touts a platform of fighting city corruption, making Phoenix safe and bringing manufacturing jobs back to Phoenix. Hmm, OK. Not aware these are overriding problems.

In a flurry of dueling mailers, the state senator in my district reduces her opponent to a tax-raising, law enforcement-hating extremist, while the opponent caricatures her as a monarch in a fantasyland who shills for the health insurance companies.

They work up the electorate’s umbrage if not its IQ.

Heck, I’d settle for appropriate timing with the attack ads. Half or more of the onslaught came well after many of us had already sent back our ballots — are the campaigns aware that mail-in voting begins in early October?

Does all this blustering really move the needle? The partisanship in our body politic is so hardened now, are there really that many undecideds who look for guidance off these hackneyed sale pitches?

I’d imagine if the political parties truly care about the electorate, an inspired member among the ranks would propose the grand idea of allowing voters to opt-out of election advertising.

Better yet, to borrow from the internet users bill of rights and data privacy protection, require citizens to opt-in for political advertising on any device or platform. Those who are subjected to politicking barrages via text, calls, emails and snail mail should at least be willing participants.

That would be a win for both bipartisanship and voter rights.

Until then, we deserve to toast ourselves for securing a reprieve from the increasingly asinine practice we charitably call political advertising.

At least for the next year and a half or so, because before you can say midterms or “the most important election in our lifetime,” election 2022 will be upon us.

Salud.