By the time most of you read this, the race to fill Richard Baker’s Sixth Congressional District seat will be over. Thanks be to God.

Finally, the seemingly incessant barrage of TV commercials, radio ads, mailers, emails, blog entries, and phone calls are over…at least for a few weeks. Before you know it, we’ll be enduring it all over again this summer and fall.

This particular race exemplifies many of the problems with our political process. For starters, the standard, two-year Congressional term is arguably too brief to be truly legislatively productive, since most members of Congress spend a significant portion of that time running for reelection. Of course, one could argue that more time spent campaigning means less time available to further screw up the country.

Furthermore, this special election is merely to finish out the last quarter of Baker’s two-year term. That’s not even enough time to learn which D.C. call girls are infection-free. Yet, the Democrats and Republicans have fought over this miniscule fraction of a Congressional term like a couple of hookers fighting for the last dose of penicillin on Earth.

Why are they spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for such a short stint in Washington? Is it because they believe in their candidates so much that they think they’re worth it? You must be high. Trust me, they’d be doing the same if the candidates were a couple of lobotomized, hermaphroditic idiot savants.

No, they’re spending small fortunes on skewering the living daylights out of the other guy in order to help add one more party minion to their numbers on Capitol Hill. They don’t really care about what their candidate claims to stand for as long as he has the right letter next to his name, because once inside the Beltway, party leaders plan to “gently coerce” the new kid on the block into voting along party lines.

That leads me to the second issue I have with our political structure: the two-party system. I can choose from dozens of beer brands at the bar, hundreds of TV channels at home, and innumerable porn videos on the web. When it comes to choosing a Congressman, a U.S. Senator, or the leader of the free world, however, most voters usually have only two viable options on the final ballot.

I know we live in the digital age, but I don’t believe our electoral process should also be based on a binary system. After all, the binary system, which is the native tongue of all modern computers, consists of nothing more than zeroes and ones. The American political system, on the other hand, consists almost solely of zeroes looking out for number one.

Sadly, as much as people like me decry the inadequacies of our two-party system, it’s almost impossible to escape the inevitability of electing a member of either the Democratic or Republican Party in any given race. They’re like rival factions of the electoral mafia, and because these goons are so powerful and entrenched, folks with aspirations of running for elected office feel obliged to align themselves with one side or the other. If they don’t, they’ll most likely get muscled straight into political oblivion.

When even minimally legitimate candidates run as either members of a third party or as independents, they’re typically vilified by the major parties as spoilers who will take votes away from their candidates and cost them the election. Cases in point: Ross Perot and Ralph Nader.

Additionally, in most instances, their candidacies are marginalized via dismal media coverage. For instance, during the party primary races for Baker’s seat, independent candidate Ashley Casey felt so slighted by stories implying that the general election would effectively be a showdown between a Democrat and a Republican, she wrote a letter to The Advocate reminding them and other media outlets that the two major party candidates would eventually account for only a portion of the options available to voters.

Even after the primaries were over, the endless attack ads from the Republican National Congressional Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee aimed at the other party’s candidate have only served to enhance the appearance of a two-man race. After all, if someone besides Don Cazayoux and Woody Jenkins is running and the major parties aren’t attacking her, she must not be worth the trouble, right?

Casey’s plight for consideration as a legitimate candidate just goes to show what many ladies already know: Even in a three-way with two men, a woman still can’t get the attention she needs. (Yeah, I know there are two other guys on the ballot, but it seems at this point that they’re just sitting in the corner watching the action.)

A third problem I have with our political system centers around the current campaign finance laws. As it stands, individuals, corporations, and unions are limited in the amount of money they can legally contribute to a specific candidate’s campaign per election cycle, but they can give as much as their hearts desire to various political organizations. These advocacy groups, in turn, can then spend those unrestricted funds on “issue-oriented” ads to “educate” the electorate, as long as they don’t promote or endorse a certain candidate.

As a result, we wind up seeing a slew of negative ads that “enlighten” us about all the political, and sometimes personal, shortcomings of the person they want to defeat. Funds to air spots that tout their candidates are strictly regulated, but douche bags with deep pockets can spend a mint on borderline libelous ads slamming the other dude, so long as they fall short of expressly advocating the election or defeat of a certain candidate. No wonder American Idol garners more voter participation than U.S. presidential elections.

In some instances, even bigger douche bags with equally big bank accounts (i.e., power-tripping general contractors devoid of all human decency) don’t even bother with political organizations. They simply spend hundreds of thousands of dollars of their own money on TV spots and websites in an attempt to paint an office seeker from the other side of the aisle as just slightly less evil than a child molester.

The majority of these donors, these purveyors of douche bagginess, are exceptionally wealthy men who are extremely sexually frustrated because they suffer from clinically incurable erectile dysfunction. That’s why it’s called “soft money.”

While that last statement may not be completely true, at least it’s more factual than the typical soft-money ad. (Jeremy White is responsible for the content of this communication.)