Scary stories being told, people dressing themselves up, skeletons on display and the promise of sweet treats.

It’s election time — yay!

Halloween and voting season falling so close together on the calendar made me notice a few similarities between the two, which has turned into what I like to call The Reverse-Halloween Theory of Politics. Check this out. With Halloween you have a whole bunch of eager folks approaching strangers with the expectation of receiving a reward for presenting themselves in a certain way. Elections are pretty much the mirror image. There’s a few people carefully fine-tuning their appearance and promising good things while knocking on doors, robo-calling, running TV and radio ads, mass mailing and such. Both can result in indigestion and even decay, but asking for votes in big down-and-dirty campaigns essentially is just backwards Halloween.

Here is the Political Halloween Theory applied to ballot measure advertising:

“Vote yes on Ballot Measure Blahty-Blah. It’s a king-size candy bar.”

“No on Measure Such-and-Such. Proponents would have you believe it’s a candy bar, but really it’s a stale popcorn ball packaged around a wormy apple that may or may not have razor blades inside. Not even new razor blades. They might be old ones. And rusty. You can believe me because I’m standing in a hazelnut orchard wearing gloves, apparently just taking a brief moment out of my hazelnut gathering to film an ad.”

The Yes crowd comes back with someone in a flannel shirt, or otherwise sensibly dressed, sitting relaxed at a kitchen table enjoying a soothing cup of tea and/or coffee, depending on the demographic, pointing out that hazelnuts can be in the candy bar — and it just goes on and on until election coverage finally ends, which is like Thanksgiving. And if your candidate or cause wins it’s like Christmas, and let’s just stop there. I don’t want to wander any further toward the neighborhood of political science with this hard-hitting politics-as-holiday analysis.

But hold on a tick. About that political science. What is even remotely scientific about politics? I don’t get that matchup. It’s like real things were being paired up for teams and the coach or PE teacher in this example took a look at what they had to work with and said, “Business, you and Administration are a team. Sports and, uh … Medicine. You two team up.”

Politics is jumping up and down, all excited, saying “pick me, pick me.” Science is busy thinking about dark matter. Coach runs out of logical combos and just gives up and says, “Politics and Science, you’re together.” Everybody laughs because they know there’s no way Politics and Science are going to win. But Politics loves it. “Oh yeah, me and Science? We’re good buddies. Played dodge ball together. Matter of fact, I’m going as Science for Halloween. I know this neighborhood where every house gives out king-size candy bars. Used to be folks that gave out popcorn balls, but me and my other buddy, Jerry … you met Jerry Mander? Well, we adjusted the boundaries and now it’s nothing but sweet, sweet caramel, nougat, tax breaks and hazelnuts at every door. It’s my favorite holiday.”

This has been the 2016 edition of the “And Furthermore” Voters Guide. Remember to fill in the bubbles on your ballot carefully and do no put frowny faces in the little ovals next to things you don’t like, as was recommended in previous versions of this guide. One final tip: Bundle all political mailings into large bales. They are useful as retaining walls. Now get out there and pick through the candy bars and stuff you don’t care for as much and don’t forget to vote.

Jon Rombach is a quasi-political scientist and local columnist for The Chieftain.