It is election season – again. This is our second election campaign in less than three months, and while we escaped this particular scourge in February, we’re not so lucky with this campaign. The scourge I speak of is campaign signs.
Campaign signs are going into the ground everywhere. Pick a colour from the box of Crayola crayons and there’s a campaign sign for it. All the parties use campaign signs, but should they? Do these signs really make a difference in who is elected?
In some ways they do, if you buy into equating the number of signs with someone’s popularity. Drive around and you may see a plethora of blue signs, red signs, or orange signs. Look closely and you might see some green signs – but they would need a candidate first. We were all spared this in the winter provincial campaign because lawn signs don’t do well going into frozen yards. Now we are in the mud season so it is game on for the visual assault on our political senses.
We are visual people. Seeing a groundswell of signs in one colour, over another, does get noticed. The more signs in yards for one candidate over another may look like that candidate has more support. It could also mean that the party with the largest amount of signs is just better organized in distributing signs; or that other parties are that much more disorganized.
Years ago, when working in radio, the station’s general manager asked in a meeting why so much promotional money was being spent advertising a station on park benches, the sides of buses, and on billboards.
He explained that he didn’t care if people listened to his radio station – so long as when people thought of a radio station, his was the first one they thought of. Those visual ads on the park bench or a billboard reinforced this. Visual saturation. That GM did depart a year later but has had a successful career in the business since.
The problem with visual saturation – like campaign signs – is balance. If it’s overdone, viewers become oversaturated or numb to the message. Most of the signs are plastic with metal supports, or even plastic bags over wire frames. These are not great for the environment. But the other problem is that you cannot campaign without them.
Every campaign that wants to really contend for an election has to have a sign game. Election signs are the one place you do not skimp on. It’s old school, but a necessity. But are they effective? No.
Like tinsel, I find campaign signs distracting, and borderline annoying. My preference would be to have yards filled with dandelions over yard signs. This isn’t just because the signs are distracting: it’s because I don’t want to know what other people’s preferences are.
Politics is a personal thing – who you vote for, who you support, that is something for you. What your leanings are may come out in a conversation between people, but placing a campaign sign on a front yard broadcasts it to the world. Frankly, we don’t need to know this information about our neighbours.
No one needs to know with a giant spotlight shining down on their yard that they support one party or politician over the other.
This could also be a liability for political candidates too. In the zeal to get as many signs out as possible, what if some of those signs go to places where the politician wouldn’t welcome that resident’s support?
Sadly, we will not see a change in this unless there is a concerted effort by all campaigns to not use campaign signs.
Are campaign signs effective? Yes. They are effective at polluting the landscape with people’s views, which are best left for conversation and the ballot box. Fortunately, there are only four more weeks left in the federal campaign. With that, we won’t have to deal with more election matters for another year or so until the municipal election. Hopefully. Maybe. Tinsel!
This column was originally published in the April 2, 2025 print edition of The Morrisburg Leader.
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