Like the rest of you, we're sick of getting our mailboxes stuffed with annoying cardboard campaign literature.

Honestly, a pox on all their houses for this kind of crap. Not only are the politicians killing perfectly good trees to make these cheesy mailings, they also are telling half-truths or outright lies about each other. Of course, politicians can't help the latter. They're genetically programmed to do so.

Which is to say, they all should be ashamed of themselves. But they aren't. It's the American way of getting elected.

But these things are hard to get out of the mailbox and into the recycle bin where they belong.

We have fun with a few campaign mailers, after the jump.

Today's Courier-News cover story "Campaign mail buries Elgin-area homes" takes a look at some of the reasons why we've been inundated with campaign mail this election season.

To help you figure out how to tell fact from fiction on all that political propaganda landing in your mail box, we offer up the following: Each is a link that will lead you to a non-partisan website. There you can search and find out exactly how each local candidate voted on issues that are important to you.

• Project Vote Smart


• FactCheck.org


• Illinois General Assembly


• U.S. Senate


• United States House of Representatives

More resources from Sun-Times Media West, after the jump.