Politics brings out the worst in some people, most notably Internet trolls and scumbags who like to steal candidate yard signs or literature from doors.
Last night some of the aforementioned decided to rip up the Palmeri For Council yard signs in my front lawn and my next door neighbors'. I made nothing of it, except when I got back home from UW Oshkosh just now I noticed that my neighbors' sign was back up. Turns out that they picked up the pieces, taped them together, and replanted the sign. They are a super couple in their 80s, fully aware that mine is a low budget campaign, and didn't want me to just give them a new sign so that I would have more to spread elsewhere. I think that's really cool.
Maybe if the trolls and scumbags had friends like my neighbors, they might start to act like human beings.
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Back in the day, when I was an "agreeable" person, I knew people who were politically active and I had a corner lot. That meant I was frequently asked to play hostess to signs. My pal had the same situation. We would both say yes. So as a former sign gardener I have seen this sort of thing.
On the one hand, I do know of cases where "grown-ups", many of whom wore suits and ties to work and made "responsible decisions that effected their community" on a daily basis, went around destroying opponents signs - even those type that people put on top of their cars. They were actually seen doing this, but not in a way that they could be charged with anything.
A great number of signs in a community for any one candidate tends to have a really strong bandwagon effect. I have seen one candidate win by doing nothing but intense signing and one parade appearance in a covered vehicle. It was dumb, but worked. People seeing the signs think "wow, s/he must be really popular, must be the one". It does work. So no one wants to see the other guy have a ton of signs.
For the most part though, signs would get mangled by the passing hoodlums some people call their children, for no other reason than it's dark and the signs are there and wrecking them is likely preceived as not really hard-core vamdalism. I don't think everyone realizes that signs can be expensive, or they don't care. But overall lots of kids find politicians to be dorky losers who are full of B.S. (often difficult to disprove) and would rip stuff up just because of that, not even realizing who that guy was, not caring. One year, they grabbed various signs from around the 'hood and creatively redistributed them on other people's lots.
My pal stop allowing signs on her property. I decided to become disagreeable, so no one asks anymore and I can pick and choose as I like. Problem solved for both of us.
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