Feeling frustrated by our two presidential candidates? Sick of the RATS, the attacks and campaign reporter pack? Wish we could just get over with it and vote already?

Start thinking about life without primaries.

Less than 10 percent of registered voters went to the polls in Massachusetts yesterday to vote in the state primaries, a record low. Who can blame them though when 93 of 160 state representatives and 21 of 40 state senators were running unopposed? The so-called election--do you still call it an election when there's only one name on the ballot?--wasted tens of thousands of dollars per district, money which paid for polling booths, ballot counting and bureaucracy.

The problem is the primaries.

Between municipal, state and federal elections and their primaries, American voters go to the polls at least once a year--this year Massachusetts residents will vote three times. With all this time spent voting, American voter turnout is abysmal. And while everyone has been trumpeting ideas to help bring disaffected voters back to into the booths--especially the young who, according to a recent IOP survey, distrust politics and politicians in record numbers--no one has suggested that people might simply be tired of politics. Politics as campaigning, that is.

People would vote more if they were made to vote less. In countries where voting happens only once every few years voter turnout is far more impressive than our dismal returns. In Britain, where voters face major elections only once every five or six years and have no primaries, turnout in the 1997 general election was a whopping 71.5 percent, according to The Guardian.

Primaries result in voter apathy because they inflate the already excessive time spent on the incredibly unproductive business of campaigning. Campaigning not only wastes politicians' time, but, because of its attack ads, its mud-slinging and its inflated promises, campaigning destroys voter trust. An extended campaign season leaves political reporters with little to write about except the occasional missteps of candidates on the trail and juicy gossip, none of which is really relevant to the issues of governance. The skeleton generally rises out of the closet in the beginning of a campaign--if you think back far enough the public was well aware of Clinton's philandering back before the New Hampshire primary in 1992. The current system leaves the public with a lot of time to forget about these flaws before any meaningful voting actually occurs.

Primaries also cost money. Over a two-year period, the 1996 presidential candidates spent $118.7 million. This year that figure may double. If campaign time was halved, the price of campaigning would drop dramatically.