It can be a statement that the homeowner refuses to be intimidated. In red state America, some Harris voters are afraid to be known, for good reason.
In posts he shared Friday from two separate accounts, Portage County Sheriff Bruce Zuchowski wrote that he tells people to “write down” the addresses of Harris supporters for future reference. He then suggests sending undocumented immigrants — whom he referred to as “locust” — to those homes.
“When people ask me…What’s gonna happen if the Flip – Flopping, Laughing Hyena Wins?? I say…write down all the addresses of the people who had her signs in their yards! Sooo…when the Illegal human ‘Locust’ (which she supports!) Need places to live…We’ll already have the addresses of the their New families…who supported their arrival!” Zuchowski wrote.
And yet people do put out Harris signs in my quite (but not entirely) red neighborhood; and I think it serves the purpose of saying “see – it isn’t true that everybody wants Trump. Some of your neighbors, who you may get along fine with, want Harris. It’s OK for you to want Harris too – you won’t be ostracized.”
(I’m at the end of a dead end road. No sense in a lawn sign. Some sense in a bumper sticker and a button, though; so I’ve got those.)
I think the Harris ones cost $20, here. The bumper sticker was $5 and the button was $3.
You’re also going to become aware that there is an Issue #12 on your ballot; which a lot of people otherwise won’t realize until they get there, and maybe not then if they don’t bother, despite the signs, to turn their ballot over. (Here, at least, propositions are usually on the back of the ballot.)
Especially if I can see them happily swimming around down there and laughing –
In my area during the runup to the 2020 election, your friendly neighborhood fascist a-holes went around and spray-painted a blue dot on the street in front of homes with Biden-Harris signs. Gee, wonder what they had in mind?
I volunteer once a week at a Harris office in rural Virginia. Mostly I hand out yard signs and people being afraid to put them up is a constant topic. They come in and kind of want to be talked in to it. The sign in front of the office was vandalized, but the person got caught.
Don’t know if it would be legal or not, but ISTM to me it would make far more sense for campaigns to pay voters to have the Harris or Trump signs up in the yards, rather than the other way around.
In a 3+ party system, it might make more sense. For instance, if I’m a Canadian who doesn’t like the Conservatives, I might be torn between voting for the Liberals and the NDP; if I see a much larger number of NDP signs compared to Liberal signs, I might be persuaded that they have a better chance at winning in my riding.
Another point not addressed (if I overlooked it, I apologize) - political yard signs on specific issues.
I mean, it’s not a problem here in Colorado where I can actually vote by mail and look up each of dozens of ballot initiatives (often with very misleading mini-blurbs IMHO!) and figure out what each actually entails…
But if you’re otherwise voting in person, and all you see is some brief blurb about such an issue, all that subtle (and not so subtle) “Vote YES on 22 and save the children!” or “Vote NO on 49, keep our streets safe!” is going to be in your background thoughts.
Again, perhaps not a huge effect, but apparently worth the effort.
Yard signs are meant to convince someone, but the person they’re meant to convince is the person displaying the sign. Once you convince someone to put up a sign, you’ve almost certainly convinced them to get off their butt and vote.
I rent and will not be putting up a Harris/Walz yard sign this election because my landlord/neighbor has told me he’s seriously afraid that one of our Republican neighbors here in the semi-rural part of the Hoosier state might take that as an affront, and do some property damage. Probably after dark.
eh, I don’t know, I think you may have cause and effect mixed up. I’m not sure being convinced to put a sign in your yard makes you more likely to vote. Rather, I suspect the people who agree put up signs are already the more dedicated and conscientious voters.
Around fifteen years ago or so, I was driving in a nearby neighborhood along a suburban road with campaign signs in front of every house for blocks. All the signs were for a local office (a judgeship, I think?) and every single one in front of the houses on one side were for Candidate A, while every single one in front of the houses on the other were for Candidate B. No, I don’t have any further information about why that happened.
I’ve seen Trump signs the size of small billboards on several people’s lawns. Big wooden signs on sturdy wooden frames. Those people, IMO, are either getting paid for that space or are totally crazy…and most likely both.
If you see enough of a candidate’s lawn signs and you know nothing about them, you might be curious enough to look up their web site. I did that today. A local candidate for the state house (in a verrrry small area) must have a sign out there for every voter in the district. They’re everywhere. Though I’m not a constituent (and wouldn’t vote for her if I was), I was curious enough to look her up.
I don’t know. I’ve seen some really uninformed voters. Some of these people don’t pay any attention to the news or bother learning anything about the issues or candidates. But they show up on Election Day to vote.
And I can easily imagine one of them looking at their ballot in bewilderment and thinking “Oh, there’s a name I recognize. I saw it on some signs. Well if other people are voting form him, I guess he must be good.”