Election fair play

Yard signs on a corner in Canton. Photo: Ellen Rocco

It’s said that all politics are local and I think there’s truth in that. At the local level, people are more likely to vote for the candidate and not worry so much about the party. In my township, one of the most closely followed races every two years is for town road supervisor. The work accomplished by the road crew affects everyone, on a daily basis. (Don’t get me started on what I think is the foolishness of electing a road supervisor, rather than doing a bona fide search based on skills and experience…that’s for another post.)

Around here, the main tool for getting the word out about a candidacy is the lawn sign. I know, I know. We all love to hate the explosion of lawn signs during election season, but it’s inexpensive and gets the candidates’ names out there. It’s part of the free speech thing we all believe in.

Sometimes, I’ll pass a yard with half a dozen or more signs promoting candidates for every office on the year’s ballot. They go by in a blur and none of them register with me.

Defaced yard sign in DeKalb. Photo: Ellen Rocco

Turning onto my road the other evening, a sign for one of the (several) candidates running for town supervisor definitely caught my attention. Bold blue graffiti defaced it. As I said, I don’t much care for election lawn signs, but this troubled me. It troubled my neighbors, too. There is something angry, mean and unfair about the desecration of campaign signs–it felt as if someone had sabotaged a voting machine, or the First Amendment.

It makes me want to vote for the candidate whose sign was defaced–just to protest the bad behavior. I suspect it was not one of the other candidates who did the damage. Most likely, it’s someone who doesn’t like the candidate or has a grudge against him. Whatever the reason, my message to the person who did the damage: don’t mess with campaign signs because when you do you’re messing with my democracy…the little bit of it that’s left to us…at the local level.

Tags: elections, political signs, politics, voting