If voters really want to learn something about candidates in the Nov. 4 election, campaign advertising probably isn’t the best source of information.

That seems particularly true this year in some of the hotly contested races in Kansas.

Most of the advertising that is flooding the airwaves is aimed at telling Kansas voters why they shouldn’t vote for a candidate, not why a candidate is worthy of their votes. It’s all about fostering fear and mistrust and creating a negative impression of political opponents.

The primary tools in such campaigns are negative innuendos and skewed information. The “facts” touted in many commercials may not be entirely inaccurate, but they often are selected, presented — and exaggerated — in a way that don’t fully reflect the truth.

It’s no secret why candidates use negative campaigning: It’s because it works.

It’s a sad truth that voters too often are influenced by sinister portrayals of political candidates. They may not know that much about the person they are voting for, but they know who they want to vote against. Even when candidates refrain from bashing their opponents, they offer only vague outlines and few details about what they plan to do if they are elected.

Perhaps the most serious risk of negative advertising is that it will cause a certain number of voters to simply check out. They are fed up with the accusations and find it difficult to parse the truth of the claims that are being made. Rather than delve into candidate stands enough to make an educated voting decision, they simply give up.

Recent Gallup polling indicates that voter engagement in the upcoming elections is lower than in the last two midterm votes in 2006 and 2010, and, therefore, voter turnout also is expected to be lower. It’s hard to know how much impact negative advertising has on that trend, but it seems likely there is a connection.

Politics has always been a tough game. Perhaps the negative campaigning that is occurring today is no worse than in the past, but the volume of political advertising in Kansas this year makes it hard to ignore. It’s good that most Kansas voters are aware of the upcoming election; we just hope they aren’t so disenchanted by politics that they decide simply to leave the decision to someone else.