By Zachary Gorchow
Executive Editor and Publisher
Posted: July 24, 2018 2:38 PM

Two weeks to go until the August primary, and that means yards from Erie to Ironwood are covered with political signs touting candidates, from governor all the way down to county commissioner.

Increasingly, in recent cycles, political professionals have begun to openly mock the value of yard signs as a total waste of money and campaign resources.

And yet, there they are. My hometown of East Lansing is chock-full of them. Signs for the three Democratic candidates for the 69th Michigan House District are everywhere. Big ones, little ones. There’s a slew of signs for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gretchen Whitmer, whose hometown is East Lansing. There’s more than a few signs for one of her rivals, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed. Signs are up on both sides on the local proposal to create a city income tax. And so on.

Yard sign aficionados should make a pilgrimage to Macomb County during election season. Signs there can be two or three times the size of those everywhere else and often feature the candidate’s face on them. Because Macomb County.

But do yard signs actually help win elections?

The political pros would say no. Actually, they would probably include another word before “no” that rhymes with duck.

Why all the hate for this venerable low-tech device?

For one, cost. What’s a better use of a candidate’s relatively spare resources? Direct mail and staff to canvass neighborhoods, techniques that have the chance to persuade voters to support the candidate, or a yard sign that merely affirms the house that put it up is supporting the candidate? That’s a rhetorical question.

Another gripe about signs: time. The time it takes to deliver and put up a couple thousand signs across a legislative district pulls staff resources away from the real bread-and-butter of legislative campaigns – door-to-door visits from the candidate and their staff. Time often is spent after the campaign removing the signs as well.

And then there’s theft. In high school, several of my friends, knowing I was a political geek, thought it would be funny one night to fill my house’s front yard with 40 political signs plucked from the yards of houses across the greater Birmingham metroplex. All that money and effort can get upended by kids playing a prank.

That said, signs can lift a campaign’s morale. The meaningful ones, anyway. And by meaningful, I mean signs in the yard of an actual registered voter, not those slapped along rights-of-way on major roads. Candidates slogging through a neighborhood on a 90-degree day for the second time in six months wondering if the next house is the one where Cujo is going barrel through a screen door and turn them into a chew toy can have their spirits lifted if they see houses up and down the street featuring their name in the gleaming colors of their campaign.

And in a strong grassroots campaign, the kind that aggressively goes door-to-door to meet voters, that can mean the installation of so many signs that they perhaps they can raise name identification at least a little.

But that’s the thing, it’s not the sign that makes the difference in an election, it’s the work behind getting a voter to put up the sign.

So let’s have a moment of silence for the political pros who have to acquiesce to candidates’ demands for signs. Take it away Five Man Electrical Band…