whatevere happened to stewardship?

In the kingdom of the left hand, millions of dollars are spent by candidates to gain the votes of folks they hope to represent in local, state and federal government (listed in order of importance!). I'd like to focus on local and state races since we just had our primary here in Tennessee yesterday. In my home county, only 22,000 of about 90,000 registered voters bothered to vote. These numbers do not justify the expense of two weeks of early voting borne by the candidates and the tax-payers alike. Three days would suffice. When I think of how many millions of dollars and untold hours of time were spent by candidates, their families and volunteers in the three-way race for Republican candidate for Governor in Tennessee, I can only shake my head in dismay. This is a colossal waste of time and money that could have been much better spent on things that really matter. If the political parties don't get their act together, they will suffer for this unimaginable amount of time and money literally gone down the drain.