An Estimated $80M Was Spent In The Georgia Runoff Election To Change No One's Mind

It’s hard to imagine a more pathetic use of money in the world than to spend it all on political advertising, yet that’s exactly what has happened over the past four weeks in Georgia. The state held a runoff election to determine the last seat in the US Senate and political groups spent an estimated $80 million dollars in the span of a month to presumably change almost no one’s mind and just hammer every Georgia voter with what must have been an incessant flood of advertising.

Regardless of your politics, it’s hard to imagine a worse use of this much money. Though the local affiliate TV networks in the region are probably thrilled with the surplus, for the rest of us it’s deeply frustrating because we all know how many other things could have been done with the money to actually help people. Political advertising is the worst form of extremely well-funded lying, no matter who does it. America would be better if we could just ban it altogether.