You might want to try an enlightening experiment as we get closer to election day. Put your normal preconceived notions about politics aside for a few days and open your mind to the possibility that nearly everything you’re being told via broadcast and radio news is entirely scripted, and specifically designed via behavior-modification techniques to “nudge” your choices in a predetermined direction.

You might think that months of bipartisan cooperation on numerous criminal-justice-reform bills would make that particular topic off-limits for campaigns this year.

You’d be wrong.

An organization controlled by Governor Bruce Rauner has spent a million dollars in a little over a week on a new television ad promoting legislative term limits. And that’s just for starters.

Federal Communications Commission Chair Tom Wheeler wants telephone companies to make robocall-blocking technology available to their customers. And he wants them to do so “at no charge.”