The first rule of roadside signs is you need to be able to read them. Especially from a vehicle as you pass by, otherwise, what’s the point? A good general rule of thumb is that a 3″ high letter is visible from 30 feet, so that is about the minimum. Therefore, when it comes to the ubiquitous campaign type signs, a name and perhaps the office being sought is pretty much the norm for the basic 18″ x 24″ placard. Too much crammed onto the sign or letters much smaller gets lost in a blur as you whizz by at travel speed, or even when stopped.

This year’s election cycle has featured an explosion of signage the likes of which have never before been seen in these parts. I’m not sure if it is due to excessive amounts on money available to candidates, or if some sign company was offering them at a never before offered discounted rate. Whatever the cause, the sheer numbers are eye popping.

Back to my point at the start regarding readability. If a person or group goes through the trouble of creating and expending money on a series of signs to add to the already large mix, you would think that they would want them to be able to be read. Consider these, put out by the local Republican party. They are fairly well designed, and pretty readable from a distance:

They are a very basic, easy to read message that gets the job done. The same goes for this one put out by the phony “nonpartisan” Citizens For Belknap PAC (C4B). While I am certainly not falling for their message that masks their plan to defeat as many Republicans as possible, their signs are eminently readable and easy to spot as you drive by:

In fact, as I noted above, you can still see that Republican one and read it- the 3rd one back in this pic. Both groups know what they are doing as far as good design and usage of a roadside sign. But- what of that one in the middle? As you drive by, you can barely make out a swatch of some blue, purple, and a bit of red.

Who actually thought this was a good idea? Why would anybody spend money on such an impractical and useless tool in the current campaign cycle? Well, since my curiosity was tweaked, I did what none of the other hundreds of cars whizzing by did: I stopped to take a gander at exactly what it was, and snapped a pic. Low and behold, it was a somewhat silly meme I had recently seen floating about the Internet:

OK- so the sign designer actually expected passing motorists to take this all in? Of course, I could care less that some silly PAC decided to spend money on this, so I merely chuckled when I saw who it was. But the actual subject matter, once observed, did raise another question. The unreadable sign meme is apparently making use of the C4B listing of endorsements, and riffing off their logo. Of particular interest to me as a local voting Republican, is that it categorizes all of the those “endorsed” as acceptable by the C4B, except for one, as “RINOS” (Republican In Name Only). Um, OK. Let’s Just look at the list:

Shall we play the sign-maker/PAC’s silly game? Exactly WHO is he identifying as the sole Republican from this list? What exactly is he trying to say? Only vote for ONE? That will certainly do us a whole lot of good in the coming time, won’t it? Other than for some warped sense of self-importance or to simply waste money, why on earth would this PAC choose to do this? I guess one must simply conclude he is somehow working in cahoots with the C4B PAC in working to elect the 17 Blue figures? Is that it? Color me confused…