Well, we’ve reached another electoral milestone. After two years of campaigning, fewer than 50 days now remain until Americans go to the voting booths, wait for the polls to close, endure hours of election coverage followed by days of uncertainty, followed by lawsuits and the potential for political unrest. God, time flies when you’re having fun.

Why do we do this to ourselves?

I was watching a YouTube video of an American couple (their channel is called “Baguette Bound’) who moved to France, and they were highlighting some of the things they prefer in France to America. Among the ho-hum reasons, like not being worried your kid is going to shot at school, they pointed out an interesting fact: French political campaigns only last a few weeks.

A few weeks? How do they do that? How do they even have time to start baseless rumors about Haitian immigrants in so little time? How do they manage to nominate and replace a candidate so quickly? How do they even have time to figure out which Islamophobes to invite on the plane in such a short amount of time. Seems crazy.

I looked into it a little bit further. Turns out France isn’t alone. Lots of countries have short campaigns. And not just little countries where it might be hard to get around and shake all the hands and kiss all the babies. By law, Canada must conclude their elections within 50 days. U.K. election campaigns last around five weeks. In Japan it’s just 12 days. But here we are living with an endless campaign cycle. As soon as one ends, the next begins.

Maybe that made sense when a........

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