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Thursday, March 28, 2024

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By Simon Gonzalez

The signs heralding the advent of a new season are everywhere.

Alas, not robins, the hopeful harbingers of spring. We’re talking yard signs, those ubiquitous mini-billboards trumpeting the names of various candidates for a variety of offices.

The proliferation of yard signs marks the advent of the political season in New Hanover County and North Carolina. Both parties hold their primaries on March 15, and prospective office holders are getting serious about their campaigns.

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign, seemingly sprouting up overnight. The once solitary “Dr. Ben Carson for President” sign at the corner of Oleander and Greenville Loop, which went up around the time he visited Wilmington for a private fundraiser in early January, is lonely no more. It’s been joined by a host of others, touting aspirants for school board, county commission, the N.C. house, state senate, judicial positions — although, oddly, Dr. Carson’s sign remains the only one for a presidential candidate.

Yard signs are a pervasive reality of every political season. They no doubt make the candidates feel good about themselves when they see their names all over town. They announce the rooting interest of homeowners who plant them on their lawns. They often make the news for being removed or defaced.

But do they work as a political tool?

No. And, frighteningly, yes.

“Signs don’t vote” is an axiom among campaign managers, and that’s more or less true in national and statewide races where the candidates are well known. In a 2015 study called “The effects of lawn signs on vote outcomes: Results from four randomized field experiments” for the journal Electoral Studies, researchers found that on average, yard signs increase vote share by 1.7 percentage points — rarely enough to make a difference.

But in local politics, where voters know little about the candidates, they can swing a race.

In 2011, Vanderbilt political scientists Cindy Kam and Elizabeth Zechmeister created a fictitious candidate, and posted yard signs with his name near a local elementary school. Parents of kids attending the school who responded to an Internet survey three days later put the fake candidate in their top three.

“Our study offers fairly conclusive evidence that, in low-information races, a candidate’s name recognition alone positively affects voter support,” Zechmeister said in a story on Vanderbilt’s website.

With the passion seen nationally over the presidential race, turnout should be large for the March primaries. It’s more than a little scary to think that the November ballots will be populated with candidates for county commission, board of education and judicial positions chosen by people who showed up to vote for (or against) Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton and put a checkmark by a down-ballot name they recognized from a yard sign.

As the Vanderbilt researchers pointed out, low-information races are the rule, not the exception, in American politics. Local candidates typically lack the budget for broadcast ads. Their debates aren’t aired on TV. So they rely on getting their names out there through yard signs, print and online news ads, direct mailings, buttons, and bumper stickers.

Good for them. And bad for us, if we elect our representatives because we saw their name multiple times during our morning commute.

Citizens should be involved in the process of selecting our servants in government —please note that is the way it’s supposed to work, not the other way around; they serve us, we don’t serve them. But only if the citizens are informed.

That can be a challenge, but it is possible with a little work.

By all means, look at the yard signs. See if they include a web address for the candidate, and if so go there. Promises to transform the county into Shangri-La or to make an Einstein out of every student should be taken with several grains of salt, but site visitors should at least be able to glean information about basic political philosophy.

After reading all the good things the candidates say about themselves on their own sites, do a basic Internet search and find out what others are saying. There’s no shortage of interesting news stories about some of these men and women.

Check out the websites of the county’s two major political parties to see their slate of candidates. Then after reading about how they’ll fix all of our problems and make our lives better — or, in the case of the Republicans, after being entertained by their infighting and name calling — go to ostensibly non-partisan sites run by the New Hanover County Board of Elections, Common Cause North Carolina, and the League of Women Voters.

Read your local paper and watch the news. Find out dates and locations of candidate forums, and attend.

Please, be informed. Be informed about the candidates and their positions. Be informed about the new voter ID laws, and take appropriate measures if necessary.

But please, don’t vote because of yard sign name recognition.

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