Here's Your Sign

Yesterday a friend e-mailed me about an upcoming yard-sign distribution for Rep. Stephanie Herseth, which was something of a coincidence inasmuch as (as I told him) I had been musing on the subject of political yard signs, bumper stickers, and the like whist gazing upon a Jack Billion sign near my son's school.

The gist of my musing was twofold.

First, I wondered, and still wonder, if they do any good. Or anything at all. I would really hate to think that there are folks out there who are so ill-informed and ill-formed that they would go into a voting booth and cast their ballots based on the number of yard signs, bumper stickers, lapel pins, or Styrofoam skimmer hats they saw with Candidate X's name. Once upon a time people might have been more influenced by noting that some Prominent Citizen had a sign supporting a given candidate or issue; I suspect very few feel that way anymore. My conclusion, then, is that probably almost no votes are gained directly, though a few curious souls might note having seen a number of signs and be inclined to learn more about the candidate or issue they promote--name recognition, in other words.

Likewise, I would hate to think that there are people so shallow and mean that, perceiving a greater number of bumper stickers for Candidate Y than Candidate X, go in and vote for X out of some kind of perverse orneriness. Or who don't vote at all, on the theory that since they don't see many Styrofoam skimmers with "their" candidate's name on it the game must be lost and why bother voting at all. (Although that's pretty much the theory behind not publishing national voting results until after the last precincts in the country have closed.)

Second, I reflected on the relative lack of such signs in my current domicile, Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Growing up in Omaha, Nebraska, yard signs were de rigueur--everyone had 'em every political season, tons of 'em...every front yard, every vacant lot, every roadway right-of-way, every utility pole. What's more, people had at least one in the yard for every candidate and every issue they supported. All up and down the street...and the next street over...and every street all over town--literally thousands of yard signs, great and small, horizontal and vertical, red and blue being the predominant colors, but plenty of green and yellow and even orange to go around. It was like crops of signs sprouting up in people's yards.

I imagine there were local printing shops that, like retail stores at Christmastime, literally survived only because of the political season.

It was really quite amazing...and yet it wasn't, because it was the norm for the first ten or twelve years of my life. It was only after moving here in childhood--at a time when there were virtually no such signs in use in Sioux Falls--that it occurred to me that that was perhaps not the norm across the country. That suspicion was buttressed when I returned to Omaha for college in the mid-seventies and heard one of my political science professors, who was not originally from the region, declaim that he had never known of a town that went in for political signs the way Omaha did.

And does: I was back there a few years ago during an election season, and noted as in childhood the scores upon scores of signs as far as the eye could see, urging me to vote for this candidate that I had never heard of (and obviously could not vote for if I wanted) or against some proposition that, apparently, the locals knew all about, since they were cryptic messages along the lines of NO ON 162! Okay. Good to know.

'Round these parts, although there are far more signs than in my childhood (whatever "far more" of "zero" would be), no print shops are staying alive on the basis of creating yard signs for candidates or Concerned Citizens. Today, a few people up and down the block will post a sign, or maybe--if they're exceptionally bold and the sort of people who probably routinely stay up past eleven--two in their yard, sort of decoratively positioned back from the sidewalk where they're visible but won't, you know, attract too much attention But that's about it.

I will be interested to see if the yard-sign trend, such as it is, continues. As indicated in my musings above, I really do wonder about the signs' usefulness. And yet, if everybody is erecting yard signs, as they do in Omaha, what candidate could afford not to play the game as well, even if they really do no good?

The signs, I mean, not the candidates. Although...