Some neighbors of mine have a yard sign supporting one candidate, while the people living directly across the street from them have a similar sign telling passers-by to vote for her opponent. All very normal, except for the office they’re running for: Orphan’s Court Judge.
Now, it wouldn’t surprise me at all to see yard signs across from each other favoring different candidates for President, Governor, Senator, Mayor, or even Board of Education members. But Orphan’s Court Judge?
I’ve seen yard signs for opposing candidates in the same yard. I’m not talking about public ground like along road sides near intersections, or by the highway, or any such thing, but in someone’s yard. The candidates were both running for sheriff, and the signs both remained in place for the remainder of the campaign season. I’d guess it was a conscious choice by the landowner and not some stealth campaigning one side was conducting against the other. I suppose it makes some sense, support your local sheriff and all that, but it always gave me a chuckle.
I can’t say for orphan’s court judge, though, if that’s an elected position then I didn’t know it existed. It’s probably not a thing around here.
To me that is a problem with our electoral process. I live in a big city where we are asked to vote for all sorts of down ballot city, county, and state, offices. The general public knows f*ck-all about what the office actually does, and has no idea about the individuals that are running.
Now, personally, I don’t cast a vote for an office I know nothing about, or a candidate I don’t know. But I have spoken to people who do vote, who cast a vote for someone/anyone because they feel “obligated”. I can understand it a little for partisan choices (always vote for my party), but for non-partisan jobs? WTF???
I guess voting for these offices makes some sort of historical sense in an 18th century small town election where I vote for Mr. Harffaff down the street for Drain Commissioner. (At least I can vote against Mr. Bogfoll, because I know he’s a drunk.) But it really makes little sense in my current environment.
orangeapples, were there maybe any other candidates in that election? Maybe the yard owner was saying “Either of these guys is OK, just don’t vote for that other yahoo”.
Businesses sometimes allow all candidates to put signs on their property so they don’t offend anybody, it could be just that for a homeowner too.
I don’t want anyone signs on my property.
The husband & wife really disagree about it so their compromise is to put up both.
Nooky at noon. 
On the contrary, those are very likely.
For a down-ballot race like that, the candidates likely have very little money, and even less name recognition. So lawn signs are one of the cheapest way for those candidates to gain that name recognition. They can hardly afford either TV or radio ads, and even the ads in newspapers they coud afford would be so small as to be lost among the other ads. Campaign literature is expensive, and the volunteer help to drop it at houses is also tough, You mostly have to go for joint lit drops, and then your lit piece is mixed in with others, and likely not read.
So probably the most cost-effective campaign items for such a candidate are lawn signs. Each signb is seen repeatedly by the 25-50 voters on that block. And often, in a race like this where most voters know nothing about the candidates, all it takes to win a vote is for the voter to remember ‘that’s the guy my neighbor had a lawn sign for’.
A similar campaign story: a candidate for a down-ballot financial office – most voters didn’t even know what the office did. We decided to have house parties at the homes of various supporters around the city. For each of them, we supplied a leftover campaign piece and on the back of it a letter from the homeowner to his neighbors, explaining why he thought this was important & inviting them to a house party a few days later. These were distributed to the 4-6 blocks around the house, about 100-120 houses.
And nobody came. I think the largest attendance we had was about 6 neighbors. We wwere discouraged, thought them a waste of time. and would have dropped them, except they had all been announced in advance. But on election night, we won, and analyzing the votes, we were puzzled to get about 10% more votes from some precincts vs. similar precincts next door.
A couple days later, we realized that we had held a house party in each of those precincts. Voters weren’t interested enough in this down-ballot office to even come to a neighbors house party. But when they got in the voting booth, they recognized the candidates’ name as the one their neighbor had a house party for. And that was enough to get 10% more of them to vote for our candidate. And lawn signs in a neighbor’s yard work that way too. (Which is why I think lawn signs on a quiet residential street lawn are just as good or better than a sign in the boulevard alongside a busy highway.)
On the contrary, those are very likely.
For a down-ballot race like that, the candidates likely have very little money, and even less name recognition. So lawn signs are one of the cheapest way for those candidates to gain that name recognition. They can hardly afford either TV or radio ads, and even the ads in newspapers they coud afford would be so small as to be lost among the other ads. Campaign literature is expensive, and the volunteer help to drop it at houses is also tough, You mostly have to go for joint lit drops, and then your lit piece is mixed in with others, and likely not read.
So probably the most cost-effective campaign items for such a candidate are lawn signs. Each signb is seen repeatedly by the 25-50 voters on that block. And often, in a race like this where most voters know nothing about the candidates, all it takes to win a vote is for the voter to remember ‘that’s the guy my neighbor had a lawn sign for’.
A similar campaign story: a candidate for a down-ballot financial office – most voters didn’t even know what the office did. We decided to have house parties at the homes of various supporters around the city. For each of them, we supplied a leftover campaign piece and on the back of it a letter from the homeowner to his neighbors, explaining why he thought this was important & inviting them to a house party a few days later. These were distributed to the 4-6 blocks around the house, about 100-120 houses.
And nobody came. I think the largest attendance we had was about 6 neighbors. We wwere discouraged, thought them a waste of time. and would have dropped them, except they had all been announced in advance. But on election night, we won, and analyzing the votes, we were puzzled to get about 10% more votes from some precincts vs. similar precincts next door.
A couple days later, we realized that we had held a house party in each of those precincts. Voters weren’t interested enough in this down-ballot office to even come to a neighbors house party. But when they got in the voting booth, they recognized the candidates’ name as the one their neighbor had a house party for. And that was enough to get 10% more of them to vote for our candidate. And lawn signs in a neighbor’s yard work that way too. (Which is why I think lawn signs on a quiet residential street lawn are just as good or better than a sign in the boulevard alongside a busy highway.)
My daughter had signs placed on her yard without her permission. It took her a couple of days to remove them because she wanted to check with her husband to find out if he had been asked, but he said no, so she got rid of them.
I don’t know if it was the official campaign that placed them there or just a fan of the candidate or what.
That would make a lot of sense, but this was a few election seasons ago so I’m not one hundred percent on specifics. I don’t recall it that way, and I was pretty amused by the sign placement so I’d think I would remember if your supposition was the case. On the other hand, I’m really trying to sift through my foggy head and figure out which election that was, or which sheriff we got from it, and it’s not like sheriff is a high turnover job around here. All to no avail.
I really miss the memory I remember having. The one I got now is a poor substitute. 
That also makes a lot of sense, maybe the homeowner was friendly with both candidates and so refused to choose.
I’ve had quite a few signs on what was until very recently my property. All local, never any national candidacies. The worst part is mowing around them.
You should call that campaign, and make them come & remove the signs they put there. They’ll probably be glad to do so; they are likely receiving calls from someone with your house number 2 streets over wanting to know why their promised lawn sign hasn’t been delivered yet.
One opposing candidate near here had a habit of going to houses between 3pm when kids get home from school and 5pm when parents get home from work. he would talk to kids when they were home, ask them if he could put up his lawn sign, and get them to help him install the sign.
Then when the parents got home and saw the sign for a candidate they didn’t support, they wanted to remove it – but the kids cried about daddy taking down the sign they had helped put up. So then our campaign would get a call from the father, asking us to put up a yard sign (‘a big one!’) in their yard, near the one for the other candidate. Luckily, the parents who were upset are the ones who can vote, and this usually made them annoyed enough to make sure they did vote.
When I lived in Kentucky, the position of coroner was on the ballot. Which to me is like placing the position of plumber or systems developer on the ballot. Why don’t we just vote for every government employee if we’re going to vote for the coroner?
But yeah, you’re right, in small town days this kind of thing did make some kind of sense. In cities with more than like, 1000 people, the county commissioner or mayor or whoever should be appointing these people. Which of course only works if they are held accountable for their performance. If people won’t vote out the politicians who appoint the incompetents, then we’re no better off.
I am intrigued by the idea of Orphan’s Court.
Is this some kind of court that figures out what to do with children that just became orphans?
Is this some kind of special court that tries orphans when they commit crimes, and they need a special jury of their orphan peers?
Or is the orphan’s court specialty dealing with cases that don’t fit in the regular court categories: family, criminal, civil? “Orphan” cases, as it were.
Or is it some kind of metaphor, like kangaroo court?
Coroner can be an important post in law enforcement. Note the current protests in Ferguson, MO – one of the issues there is precisely where the person was shot, hoe many times, etc. Note that there have been complaints about the delay in releasing the official coroner’s report, and that the family has hired their own pathologist to do an independent coroner’s report.
And historically, during the pre-Civil Rights era in the US South, there were cases where white coroners reported inaccurate results for black victims of mob violence/lynching.
To Karen Lingel: That’s a great question. This is from their website:
“The Orphans’ Court oversees the probate process for many, but not all estates. The probate process involves enforcing wills, safeguarding minors’ estates, administering estates, protecting beneficiaries, preserving creditors’ rights and ensuring that the personal representative fulfills his/her duties.”
The website also listed the three judges on the Orphans’ Court, and two of the names are on the yard signs. I had falsely assumed there was only one judge. So the signs are not really for opponents.
I don’t like signs for specific political candidates, so we have one with a picture of Chief Tamanend with the admonition to ‘Vote Early and Vote Often’ .
At one point in time when we still had a land line, with an answering machine, our outgoing message around election time had Tippecanoe and Tyler Too playing as the background music.
What locality are you in? I’ve lived all over the US and never heard of Orphans’ Court.
In most US locations, this is called Probate Court.
I don’t think we are disputing that it is an important position, for the reasons you state as well as many others.
However, how many people can name their county coroner? Or state why that individual is good/bad at their job?
