Ban election signs you say??? But how will we know who to vote for???

I been noticing lately that some local elections here in Newfoundland seem to be more about the number of election signs you have, and less about your platform. On one street on my drive to work in the morning, some candidates have a sign every 10 feet. Is there a need? Do they think we are all slow readers and will not have time to read the text with only one sign?

You might argue that this is part of the election process, but some of these potential consellors have not even sent out a platform to the electorate yet. They have spent more time defining their campaign colour than their ideas? Do we really want people running our towns, provinces and countries based on the number of election signs they can afford?

Last night was the last straw for me. I came home to find the sign of a candidate on my lawn. I have a stop sign on the corner of my lot, and I assume workers for the cadidate thought it was fair game and strapped a sign to it. Only there are a couple problems with this:

1) I did not approve the plcement of the sign on my lawn.
2) Attaching election signs to municiple signage is illegal according to my city’s by-laws.

Here in lies the problem: who is going to police the use of election signs? Is it reasonable to expect the people who depend on them to get elected without requiring any vision or qualifications? Seeing as how many of them do not even follow the current rules, why would we expect them to create more restrictive ones?

What we need is a collect push as the voting public. If all those who are annoyed by the site ugly, uninformative election signs (and I know there are lots of you out there) were to band together, the politicians would have to listen. So the next time a candidate comes to you door, ask them to explain why they need need so many signs? When they cannot explain, ask them if they would support banning/limiting them? If enough of us do, it is bound to catch on.