Quick, on a scale of one to ten rate each Presidential candidate based on appearance, one being the equivalent of a slug, and ten rivaling People’s “Sexiest Man Alive of 2011,” Bradley Cooper.

That task probably wasn’t as challenging as it would’ve been a hundred years ago before American citizens had access to thousands of Google images and before candidates received constant media coverage. The scary part: studies show that under-educated voters may select the most physically appealing president before the most qualified. The scarier part: even with boundless information now literally at our fingertips, there’s an equal amount of misinformation and thus a disinterested and distrustful culture.

According to a study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology published on the University’s website, people who watch more hours of television and spend less time familiarizing themselves with politics provide 4.8 percent more support for physically appealing candidates than unappealing ones.

“Using data from the 2006 U.S. Senate and governors’ races, the study shows that for every 10-point increase in the advantage a candidate has when rated by voters on his or her looks, there will be a nearly 5 percent increase in the vote for that candidate by the uninformed voters who are most firmly planted on their couches,” reports Peter Dizikes of the MIT News Office.

The results of this study are particularly concerning for me, as I was under the impression that increasing media coverage would lead to a more knowledgeable population. How is it that we can have entire television stations dedicated solely to new coverage, and yet people walk away from their television sets more concerned with Newt Gingrich’s appearance than his fiscal policy?

Where has television gone wrong? Perhaps our news stations have become so biased that people stop paying attention to the actual, nonpartisan information released (if there is any)and instead shift their attention to the number of wrinkles of Ron Paul’s face.

Or perhaps the number of political advertisements that slander a candidate’s opponents have produced such contradicting and useless information that America’s TV-watchers feel compelled to go off of what they do know for sure: how a candidate looks.

Or perhaps those who watch excessive amounts of news programming would simply rather look at pictures of an attractive president than an unattractive one for the next four years. And that makes sense when you think about it; we don’t put “unattractive” people on billboards too often, do we?

Will Johnny Depp be elected President in 2012? No, probably not. But remember, actor Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected Governor of California in 2003 without any real political experience, suggesting that the prominence of a face on a screen can and does influence American voters.

The bottom line: When we elect a President to office in the same manor we’d choose America’s Next Top Model, we are degrading ourselves and our right to vote. Television watchers aren’t going away and neither are politically illiterate voters, and we cannot require every candidate to wear a ski mask during the campaigning process. But what we can do is encourage news programs on both television and Internet to focus more on a candidate’s stance, thus providing viewers with something more on which to base their opinions. Candidates themselves should perhaps distribute more print information to potential supporters, with less emphasis on images and more emphasis on facts. Then maybe at the Inaugural Address we can feel confident that our President has been elected for the right reasons.