Via Dean’s World comes word of a story on a single disgruntled Obama voter, frustrated over the fact that campaigns are charging money for their candidate’s lawn signs.
Every year this happens, and every year people treat it as if it were something new and outrageous under the sun. If only the grumpy Mr. Norris understood what was going on behind the curtain…
You see, one of the most annoying thing about field campaigns is how overwrought and obsessed people get about big, glossy yard signs. Virtually every study conducted on the issue shows that they have little to no effect in an already media saturated national election, and yet nutty volunteers, activists, and voters not only demand insane amounts of them, but drive the campaign nuts with reports of “enemy” signs, complaints of too few signs at this or that street corner, some signs blocking other signs, pointless outrages about supposedly stolen signs (half of which just blew away), stealing enemy signs themselves in the dead of night, blanketing roadways with signs (often illegally!) and so on.
The median strip of Local Route 11 proudly supports candidate Smith!
In any case, the amount of precious organizing/voter contact time essentially wasted on these silly sign activities is legendary, and worse: it’s done by well-meaning people who passionately believe that they are doing the campaign a huge favor. The norm is that people come into offices and basically want to just take 50 signs, all for free, so they can put them up in the middle of nowhere on a disused highway median and then call the campaign constantly to report what’s going on with them.
The practical reality is, however, that the signs are in VERY short supply during the summer, and are paid for not by the national campaign, but local donations and groups. And most of the time, charges are either for online ordering and shipping, or actually just for any extra taken on top of the first freebie.
Charging people money is less a means of getting revenue than it is limiting people’s overenthusiastic insanity about signs: making them realize that they do cost money (quite a lot, actually) and are not an infinite resource. Because, of course, if the local campaign office ever temporarily runs out of lawn signs, people coming in get just as outraged and indignant about how poorly the campaign is being run.
The fact that people get upset about a few dollars a sign is just more of the same misguided madness.
It’s not for nothing that campaign vets quietly call bumper stickers, signs, and buttons “chum” (i.e. the smelly bait you throw in the water to attract fish). The fact that the stuff drives people come into campaign offices, potentially to volunteer, is far far more important than some guy plastering his Volvo with a thousand bumper stickers.
Posted by Bad 
The Bad Idea Blog 