I have a sign, you should vote for me!

Today is part one of a two part rant. Today's topic Candidate Support Signs.

OK, so since it is an election year candidates are trying to get there name into the conciseness of the public. There are several ways to to do that. They could buy advertisements on Radio, TV, and in Newspapers. They could make speaches on a regular basis that will be picked up by the local media. they could even go so far as to set up shop in front of a store and basically shake the hands of passers-by. But for some reason lots of candidates have decided to go the easy cheap rout and put signs along the side of the road. I know you have seen these things there about 2 feet by three feet and usually made up of red white and blue. I hate these damn signs for the following reasons (in no particular order).

1. They are UGLY... like some guy took a template in a Microsoft Office product added some clip art in varying shades of red white and blue and viola! A Sign! now lets go put it on the side of a road.

2. They give me NO INFORMATION about the candidate, in fact I can barely remember the names that are on the signs. And, when they do have info it is written so small that there is NO way you can read it from the you car. A perfect example is a sign that is currently around North Raleigh is a sign (which the candidate I can not remember the name). This sign makes no sense whatsoever, it has a picture of a broom it took me months to pull up close enough to one that I could read the sentence saying he was going to sweep out congress or something like that. Which leads me to my next point...

3. The amount of time they are up. The sign I just talked about went up some time toward the end of July, the election isn't until November which means I have had to look at this UGLY UGLY sign for the past month and a half and will need to look at it for the next three months! Which makes the effectiveness of this sign even more useless because it is completely diluted. It's like people who get tired of Christmas by the end of November because decorations went up before Thanksgiving (which is a rant that will be coming during the holidays). and do you think the guy will take them all down the day after elections? Heck No! they will most likely be up until the end of the year.

4. These signs are put in horrible locations. At my old house I used to pull out from a neighborhood street onto a busy main street. Well, one day someone decided to put a candidate sign in a spot that completely blocked my view of oncoming traffic, now this wasn't on some guys yard. This spot was city maintained roadside property so I know it was some minion of the candidate that decided to put it here. I go so pissed at this sign's location I got out of my car, yanked it out of the ground and threw it down. The next day it was up again, I assumed that some resident thought the sign got blown down or something and was being nice and put it back up. So, the second time I destroyed the sign (yeah that's right ripped it in half, I chalked it up to free speech) and the next day one was back up in its place. I moved this one farther down the road and there it stayed until December 15th.

If I think about it more I am sure I could find more resons to hate these signs but I am happy with what I have written so far. So, I would like to pose a question to anyone involved in the creation or placement of these signs is... What good is it doing? I mean, people have them on the front lawn and declare themselves for a candidate (that's stupid but there is a reason for it). But, do the campaigns really think I will read the sign and say "Well, I was going to vote for John Davidson but now that I have seen a sign for him on the corner of Creedmoor and Strickland I think, I will vote for David Johnson." For the love of god there must be a better way to get a name out, one with some substance.

Tomorrow, Candidate Shwag...