It may be that the millions of dollars spent by presidential candidates for television advertising could be better used.

At least that’s the conclusion of most of those responding to an Independent-Mail.com poll question last week: “Do you believe the claims of campaign ads?”

As of Friday afternoon, of 205 votes cast, 121 (59 percent) were for the answer “No. There are plenty of ways to quote out of context.”

Another 82 voters (40 percent) chose “Not in a million years; I fact-check everything.”

Only two people, accounting for less than 1 percent of those responding, chose “Yes. They couldn’t say what they say if it wasn’t true.”

In fact, there is no law that requires campaign advertising claims be true.

“They can legally lie about almost anything they want,” wrote Brooks Jackson, director of factcheck.org. “In fact, the Federal Communications Act requires broadcasters who run candidate ads to show them uncensored, even if the broadcasters believe their content to be offensive and false.”

Both campaigns are using the law for their own purposes.

A recent ad by the John McCain faction that claims “Barack Obama (says) our troops in Afghanistan are … ‘just air-raiding villages and killing civilians’” is an example of the out-of-context type of ad. Obama did use those words in a campaign stop in Hanover, N.H. But that’s not all of the quote.

According to factcheck.org, “Obama was asked if he would move U.S. troops out of Iraq so that they could be used elsewhere. He said more troops are needed in Afghanistan, and added that ‘we’ve got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops so that we’re not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there.’”

Regarding funding for those troops, the McCain campaign has repeatedly noted that Obama voted against the bill that would add $94 billion to the war in Iraq. And he did, because the funding included no timetable for withdrawal of those troops. A few days before, McCain voted against similar legislation; at that time, it contained a timetable for withdrawal. In essence, both can be said to have voted “against supporting the troops,” but for opposite reasons.

The Obama campaign is not immune to questionable tactics.

One ad claims that McCain “backed a plan to risk your Social Security in the stock market.”

But factcheck.org reports that the plan, which McCain endorsed in 2005, would have been voluntary, and “workers could have put only one-third of their Social Security pension fund taxes into private accounts.”

In addition, the ad also implies that McCain would support investments in Lehman Brothers, AIG or Merrill Lynch, all three of which recently collapsed. The plan he supported would not call for investments in any of those specific stocks, “only a few government-run stock or bond funds.” Like most mutual funds, risks would be spread over perhaps hundreds of companies.

Factcheck.org is, by its own description, a nonpartisan, nonprofit consumer advocate for voters.

It monitors not just TV ads but debates, speeches, interviews and news releases. The Annenberg Political Fact Check is based at the University of Pennsylvania and operates on funding from the Annenberg Foundation.

It makes no claims for a candidate’s honesty or lack thereof, only expressing the facts as its researchers find them, not judgments on a candidate’s worthiness for office.

But after reading factcheck.org for a couple of hours, it’s hard to have confidence in either.

Coming Monday: Has politics always been this bad?