Nearing Election day, when you drive around you notice the lawn signs promoting a presidential candidate or another. What good do they actually do? Same goes for bumper stickers, they merely say Obama 08 or McCain & Palin. Its not like people glance at these and go “Oh! I’ll go vote for Obama because that bumper sticker has his name on it”.
Sure they represent the of the “enthusiasm” of the voters, but I doubt you or anybody else will switch their vote because of another party’s enthusiasm. The signs also give out the names of the candidates, but oh! it’s not like as if nobody knows who McCain and Obama are. If there are enough signs present, I guess crowd mentality could come into place, but in most cities, you’ll see a pretty even split. The small amount of peer pressure people face , if any, will probably go both ways.
Besides, anyone whose ever had lawn signs will know they often get stolen.
Barack Obama’s organizers hate them. John McCain’s organizers hate them. It’s because yard signs don’t vote – but they do generate a ridiculous amount of complaining that must be patiently listened to. Until yard signs sprout little legs and go to the polls on Election Day, in a presidential election with universal name recognition they are just a nice little decoration.
In conclusion, other than making you feel good about the candidate and give you a false impression of activism on your part, all yard signs do is make some of your neighbors hate you.
In your local public library, if you ruffled up a book’s pages or cut chunks of the book out, it would be looked down upon. Despite this, as artists often do, they broke the rules and turned boring books into works of art.