Now is the time for a plethora of ugly yard signs dotting the landscape.  Candidates seem to favor busy street corners near stoplights.  Usually, you’ll see at least twenty signs  lined up in a row or jammed in a muddled mess.  I suppose if you’re riding shotgun, they give you something to look at. But if you’re driving, they’re mostly a nuisance distraction.  I find it hard to believe that signs  garner many extra votes, but then maybe they increase familiarity for a certain name. Would you vote for a yard sign if you had no idea of the person behind the name?

Early voting started last week in our county. About 300 people cast their ballots at all the voting centers on the first day.  and the media  considered that quite a crowd.  By the time I voted the following Tuesday, there was only one other person before me.  That doesn’t sound like an early voting crowd to me.  However, in the State of Georgia, it’s another  story.  It’s a different population than ours, demographically, and folks have pretty strong feelings one way or the other, depending on which candidate they  dislike the most.

Some reporters believe that the number of yard signs for a certain candidate has a predictive value. I didn’t see that with the last presidential election.  There were Biden signs all over town, and yet Trump carried our county by a wide margin.  I guess the Trumpers were the silent majority.

Personally, I never vote a straight ticket.  I’m always amazed that anyone would do that, especially in a small town, where we’re familiar with most of the local candidates.  Anyone who watches the news or reads the paper should have formed an intelligent decision about the incumbents.   It’s not as easy with the challengers, but there are threads of familiarity in most of them.  You knew the family, or they went to your church, or their kids ran around with your kids.

Sometimes, I don’t vote at all.  As an example, there were 14 candidates for the school board.   I only voted for two—one an incumbent and the other with an impressive track record in the community.  Yes, I could have picked another  name from a yard sign, just to fill in the blanks, but that would be fairly risky.  What if the unknown came from out of nowhere, and has no credentials whatsoever?

I feel sorry for the candidates who spent a pile of time and money on yard signs, and lost anyway.  You wonder what  do they do with the old signs.  Store them in hopes of a future run?  Must be a pretty sad day when you burn them in a bonfire or take them to the city dump.

Nevertheless, my sympathy has it’s limits.  If I had my druthers, there would be no yard signs allowed.  But it’s a free country. Would you vote for a yard sign? I wouldn’t.