Sheryl Crow wants shorter elections, and she started a petition to make it happen

Impact

After nearly two full years of wall-to-wall presidential campaign coverage, many Americans are begging for the 2016 election to just end already.

Perhaps none more so than Sheryl Crow, the Grammy Award-winning pop artist who launched a petition this month to push both the Democratic and Republican parties to implement shorter elections in America.

Crow told Mic she's been frustrated with the ugly rhetoric in the campaign, adding that she's had to turn off the news every time her kids are in the room.

"This is crazy," Crow told Mic in a phone interview on Wednesday afternoon, referring to the long, and oftentimes ugly, campaign. "This has been going on so long and it's so divisive and there's so much hate rhetoric that we're not discussing issues and haven't been for months."

After talking with friends, the idea of shorter elections arose, and thus her #MakeItShort petition was born as a way to build support for the idea.

Since Crow launched the petition earlier this month, more than 46,000 people have signed on, including some famous faces such as actresses Courtney Cox and Connie Britton.

Crow says she's committed to making sure any plan for a shorter election season wouldn't violate the First Amendment and freedom of speech. She suggested political parties should look to other countries who have shorter elections, such as the U.K. and Canada, and "cherry pick from what works" in making a policy for shorter elections here in the U.S.

However, she said that before she gets into specifics about how shorter elections would be carried out, she hopes to reach 500,000 signatures to show a groundswell of support exists for her idea.

With 13 days of rancor and division left before Election Day, Crow's goal looks doable.