The past few months, we've been getting political advertisements almost everyday for the state senate elections that are coming up, as well as various county elections. We haven't talked much about political advertisements in my advertising classes, but they seem to follow different rules than advertisements for products. Is the role of these political advertisements merely to inform, or are they also supposed to entertain? It seems to me that the distinguishing factors between these candidates should be their positions on the issues. What I see in these ads is a focus on one or two issues concerning the other candidate which may or may not be true, but not much information on what the candidate actually supports. For example, especially for the state senate election, the flyers for one of the candidates tend to focus on a recent scandal concerning the other candidate, rather than saying what the candidate that is sending the ads would do for the state. This type of strategy seems to go more for entertainment and is less about informing the voters about the issues. I'm not sure this is fair, since the opposing candidate cannot defend himself.