The end is near. In about a week, this election season will finally be over. And when Nov. 9 comes, we should all breathe a sigh of relief, because unless you've been living in a cave on some remote planet, you're well-aware of how exhausting it's been. The personal attacks. The racism and sexism. The vulgar language. After the second disaster of a presidential debate, journalist Bob Schieffer summed it up best: "How have we come to this? This is supposed to be a campaign for the most powerful office in the land. Here we're marching in women into the hall who supposedly had some relationship with one of the candidate's spouses, and what is that supposed to prove? I mean over and over, 'If I'm elected, I'm going to put you in jail' – this is what they do in Banana Republics. People keep asking me, have I ever seen anything like this, and I keep saying no. And I hope to God I don't see another campaign like this one. America can do better than what we have seen here tonight. This was just disgraceful."

By "marching in women into the hall," Schieffer was of course referring to Donald Trump's pre-debate press conference, in which he brought out four women who accused former President Bill Clinton of sexual assault. It was an out-of-line and bizarre attempt at damage control following the release of that 2005 "Access Hollywood" tape, in which Trump bragged about sexually assaulting women. It's also just one example of how real issues, including financial issues that impact credit unions, have been buried underneath a pile of reality TV-like drama this election season.

While the third debate was somewhat more issue-focused, the phrases we'll remember the most are "nasty woman" and "bad hombres," not "economic growth" or "national debt." The day before the third debate, we asked CU Times readers to send us the questions they hoped FOX's Chris Wallace would ask Trump and Hillary Clinton. Some readers said they wanted to know how the future president would handle cybercrime, student loan debt and large-scale bank fraud like the Wells Fargo scandal, but most questions centered on an issue that has weighed on credit union executives for a long time: Regulation. The costs associated with complying with regulations imposed on credit unions have crippled many cooperatives and forced others to merge. In a recent CU Times infographic, data from LexisNexis and CUNA showed credit unions lost an estimated $1.1 billion in revenue in 2014 due to rising regulatory expenses, and increasing regulatory demands are estimated to cost credit unions $71 per member per year. The rising costs have led to higher loan rates, lag time in service delivery, less competitive pricing, a lack of modernized technology upgrades, and fewer products and services at credit unions, according to the research. Credit unions deserve to know if their future president has a plan to ease these burdens.