Conservative candidate Scott Anderson has recently taken a stand against “sign pollution” in his Okanagan riding. He’s reducing the number of political signs in his campaign, and he’s encouraging his opponents to do so as well. The Liberal incumbent, Eric Foster, agrees with Anderson — but NDP opponent Mark Olsen doesn’t.
Signs aren’t pollution, Olsen argues, but rather a form of communication. Limit the number of signs you’re using and you limit how voters can express themselves. The takeaway message from Olsen is that electoral signs are how we communicate during an election.
Are they, though?
According to Elections B.C., in the pre-campaign period (Feb. 15 to April 15), parties are allowed to spend $1.5 million on self-promotion; during the actual campaign, they can spend as much as $4.6 million. As British Columbia gets closer to the May 14 general election, this means more money for staff, advertising and — you guessed it — signs.
We’ve only just ticked over from the pre-campaign period to the campaign proper, so maybe we’ve yet to see the real sign surge, but it seems to me that there’s been far less “sign pollution” in this election than in years previous. (I remember one particularly egregious election when I was in high school when it seemed you couldn’t drive for 30 seconds in Saanich without running into an Ida Chong sign.)
But the number of signs on my daily route has remained sensible and constant. There have been suggestions that candidates in Victoria have been discouraged from “sign spamming” — inundating public spaces with countless environmentally unfriendly advertisements. If that’s the case, then it’s a decision I agree with.
When I went to Japan last month, I spent a day on the island of Miyajima, which happened to be in the middle of a local election. On Miyajima, as in many parts of Japan, campaigning is confined to a few specific public billboards, where candidates are permitted to post their pictures and party platforms. That’s it; that’s the extent of the political signage. I was amazed — it seemed like such a novel approach.
Yet I’m torn. On the one hand, I enjoy the ubiquity of campaign signs around e-day. It’s a visual reminder of our common participation in the body politic. Even if we’re voting for different parties, we’re still involved with one another at the basic democratic level.
On the other hand, there’s something really distasteful about row after row of wire-framed plastic signs, all sporting identical photos of a candidate’s smiling face, as though the campaigners have realized that mind-numbing repetition is an effective stand-in for sound policies and persuasive arguments, and they’re not afraid to show us they know it.
I sometimes wonder why they use that strategy; surely it annoys more people than it persuades. Yet we all know that the more people are confronted with an image, the more likely they’ll be to recall it and the more sway it will have with them on a subconscious level. Political advertisers are well aware that our visual natures are easily manipulated.
In an era of low voter turnout, we face the perennial problem of the modern Canadian election: How do we raise awareness about the election and encourage people to vote without promoting a style of campaigning that reduces candidates to easily digestible images and sound bites? Do campaign signs promote an interested, educated voting populace, or are they the visual equivalent of two old neighbours shouting angrily at each other from across the fence? Do signs mean anything, or do they, as Anderson argues, merely give “the impression of support”?
While I’m glad the “battle of the signs” seems to have eased off for 2013, the issues surrounding election signs are relevant. People — especially young people — are frustrated that our elections are treated like popularity contests (although the fact that I’m a Michael Ignatieff fan might mean I’m immune to charismatic politicians), and sign spamming heightens that frustration.
This is a historic election for B.C. (although not, perhaps, “the most important election in modern history,” as Premier Christy Clark has argued) and voters know it. We don’t need to be barraged by 20 or 30 election signs in a row to know that what happens on May 14 will have significant ramifications for our province.
This might be wishful thinking, but maybe seeing fewer election signs is an indication that the politicians know that we’re taking this one seriously.
