Lawn signs
Political lawn signs have on occasion been sources of minor flash points locally. It’s useful to remember that they are indeed minor — they appear a few months before an election and go away fairly quickly afterwards. Occasionally they linger for a week or two after an election, but sooner or later they all go away.
To some people they may be an irritating eyesore, but for political candidates they are vital ways of building name recognition and buttressing the apparent strength of a candidacy. The more lawn signs, the more the likelihood that a candidate is working seriously to get a message out and that message is resonating. It’s also, perhaps even more importantly, a freedom of speech issue.
Most of them are harmless and hardly interfere with traffic safety. The rules governing their use are spelled out on the Secretary of State’s Web site, and most are reasonable. The one that gets a little too close to overkill in our view is the rule that states they have to be about 25 feet from the centerline of the road. That means many are going to be more than 10 feet off of the edge of the road, and hard to see.
Many, therefore, get placed closer. The rule should be changed to acknowledge this reality, since the signs themselves are hardly harmful. What is truly astonishing, however, given the financial straits of the state, is the apparent eagerness that the Agency of Transportation takes in yanking up offending lawn signs in the final weekend before an election.
That’s what happened last week, the last one before election Day. Hello. What is that supposed to accomplish? Five days before election day the state thinks it’s okay to send would-be citizen legislators scrambling off to some hard-to-find garage to retrieve lawn signs from the transportation agency’s garage there? Most of them don’t have that kind of time.
Running for office is tough and stressful. It’s unfortunate the state chooses to make it more so. The rules on positioning lawn signs should be relaxed and the AOT should lighten up. Certainly their timing needs an attitude adjustment. Pulling up lawn signs without any warning in the waning days of often hotly contested political campaigns when there’s a lot at stake is ridiculous.
Change the rule, or at least notify candidates ahead of time when a “sweep” is coming through. We didn’t realize the AOT had so much time and money on their hands, particularly when the condition of the state’s roads and bridges has been such an issue recently.