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We've noticed a distinct lack of originality in this year's campaign ads. Candidates across the country are using identical lines.

It wasn't quite a debate, though Gov. Rick Perry and Democratic nominee Bill White each sat under the bright lights last week and aired claims that have already faced the Truth-O-Meter.

We fact-check a campaign ad from the closely contested race between Michael Bennet and Ken Buck.
 

The final countdown begins. Early voting opens today, Oct. 18, 2010, throughout Florida, and the candidates shift into overdrive for their final two-week push with several debates scheduled for the U.S. Senate and governor's races.

The Truth-O-Meter spent much of the past week stuck on Half True.

Hope as we might that politicians and pundits would be beacons of truth, they struggled to get things right on everything from mammograms to the federal budget.

In one case, both Democrats and Republicans fumbled on the same issue: foreign money in U.S. elections. And in one case -- taxes -- a Republican got it mostly right.

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Here's how things went down: 

A number of Democratic candidates in tight races have attacked Republican opponents who have voiced support for a proposal to replace federal income taxes with a tax on retail sales, the so-called "Fair Tax." But too often, the ads only mention half the equation -- the part about the sales tax.

Republican Jeff Atwater and Democrat Loranne Ausley come out swinging in a pair of TV ads attacking each other. But each ad has its issues when it faces the Truth-O-Meter.

We've examined two claims made recently by gubernatorial candidates Frank Caprio and Lincoln Chafee.

Caprio attacked Chafee for his handling of a 1990s teachers' dispute in Warwick.  We ruled Caprio's claim Half True.

Chafee said changing Rhode Island's official name would require amending the U.S. Constitution. We couldn't rule definitively on that, but decided to share our research anyway.

We tally our Truth-O-Meter rulings on ads from outside groups and find they are filled with exaggerations and falsehoods.

Bill White says Rick Perry told students organizing a gubernatorial forum that he couldn't attend due to a scheduling conflict. Then the day of the event, Perry tweeted that he'd enjoyed a rare morning off by going for a run with the dog. White's move? A re-tweet, of course.

Christine O'Donnell, the Republican nominee for a U.S. Senate seat from Delaware, pivoted from dispelling notions that she's a witch to taking on Democrat Chris Coons over taxes. But how accurate are her attacks?

With millions of ad dollars flowing into Ohio from outside groups — groups that do not coordinate their spending with the candidates, or at least may not legally — the claims are flying like wild pitches. PolitiFact Ohio and others are increasingly blowing the referee's whistle on the distortions.

Yet the sponsors of the ads continue unabated, convinced, apparently, that the truth, or the whole truth, doesn't win elections.