Voters in America's most significant swing state are ready for the presidential race to be over -- but the candidates won't leave them alone.
ETNA, Ohio -- People in Ohio are just like you and me: They can't wait for this presidential campaign to end.
"Let's just say we're pretty sick of all the ads, all the phone calls. We've had enough!" Paula Dillon, a 50-year-old teacher's aide at a high school in this Columbus suburb, told me. The robocalls pile up on her home answering machine: six, seven, 10 a day. "I don't listen to any of it anymore," she said. "I just hit erase."
As Election Day draws nigh, the major sentiment of the American people appears to be not excitement or jubilation or even nervousness -- it is exhaustion. Last week, a video of a 4-year-old girl crying because, she told her mother, she was "tired of Bronco Bama and Mitt Romney" became a nationwide sensation, attracting millions of views and prompting National Public Radio, the source of the election news that so distressed Abigael Evans, to apologize to the youngster.
At Romney's campaign rallies Friday, the crowd chanted, "Four more days!" -- looking forward to the president's comeuppance, but also seeming eager for the sheer end of the campaign. "Absolutely, I can't wait for it to end," said 47-year-old Jim Snyder, a pharmacist from Reynoldsburg, who is still being inundated with campaign mail and phone calls even though he voted days ago. "It's just way, way too much."