By It's bad enough when we're bombarded with mudslinging in the governor's race. But as the smoke clears after yesterday's election, we're also left recovering from an all-out war of the mailers and campaign signs in Los Altos Hills.

This is going to sound like a broken record, but here we are, once again subjected to a nasty city council campaign filled with distortions of one another’s records.

We’ve been through this all before: some on endorsement lists say they didn’t actually endorse; those putting up signs on property did so without permission; mailers point out what’s wrong with the other guy instead of sticking to the candidates’ issues.

On one hand, it’s good to know candidates want the council seats badly enough that they pull out all the stops. After all, Los Altos drew zero contenders in its last council race.

However, when pulling out the stops means knowingly distorting someone’s record, we protest.

There was an effort early in the campaign to go with no campaign signs. Not all candidates agreed, unfortunately, so we saw loads of signs dotting the Hills landscape. Even worse, however were the mailers - dozens of them - that contained questionable information about all four candidates running for council. Bill Kerns and Janet Vitu were portrayed by Dean Warshawsky and Breene Kerr supporters as sympathetic to and funded by developers. Warshawsky and Kerr were portrayed as seeking to turn back the clock toward more restrictive housing development, which they deny.

One Vitu-Kerns mailer touts their “honesty, integrity, truth,” and complains about a photo distortion in a Kerr mailer of the mission-style town hall they support. Then, it distorts information about the height of the proposed town halls, citing that the “average” height of the mission-style town hall is only 22 feet, compared with the 18-foot height of the citizens’ group’s alternate proposal. In fact, the 18-foot reference is the highest point of the structure, versus the mission design’s 35-foot high point.

The best thing Hills residents could have done was simply toss the mailers and, instead, meet with the candidates through coffees or election forums.

Limiting or eliminating campaign signs is a good idea. An even better one is a signed agreement between candidates to talk about themselves and the issues, not about how bad the other guy is.

The voters, too, have to seek out valid information and not rely on the distortions of negative campaigning.