RE: America's Cash Crop
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That's a funny perspective. They grow in the fall, like mushrooms. Weird to see these colorful signs in black and white.
The Netherlands couldn't be more different. We don't even elect mayors or senators directly, never mind judges or school board members. And our suburbs are designed to avoid driving along people's front yards. So we don't have a lot of lawn signs. Maybe some window posters here and there. In other European countries (Germany, Spain, Estonia, Lithuania), I saw mostly commercial billboards used for political advertising.
At the moment Dutch farmers are protesting for the right to keep polluting by flying flags upside down along the highways. But during election campaigns, political posters are concentrated on wooden boards put up by the municipality. Since this tended to turn into an ugly mess, more and more cities started putting up posters in standard sizes for all party lists themselves (yes, that's 20 parties campaigning for city elections - 15 of them were elected). I don't like this approach; it means you don't need any volunteers to be visible.
There's actually two growing seasons, spring for the primary election (think one of your party lists but they're all running for the same seat and only members of that party can vote for them) and then the general election in the fall with the party winners competing against each other. This has led to situations where one party is supporting some of the more extreme candidates in the opposing party during primaries in hopes of having an easier matchup against the extremist in the general election. Give me a week and I should be able to tell you how bad of an idea that was.
I wrote this in part to get an idea of whether this is a common phenomenon or a peculiarly American thing, now I'm going to have to read up on how you do things there, it sounds intriguing. Particularly the designs of the suburbs 🤣 The area these were shot in was once the suburbs of Louisville (Kentucky) but the city has since grown considerably and they no longer count as that.
They use commercial billboards here too but those are mostly concentrated around major highways, what I photographed for this was all done on an individual, volunteer basis.
Ah, the old upside down flag gag. That's interesting because here flying it upside down is largely confined to groups on the left end of the spectrum. Then again, it's largely the ones on the right that have flags and flagpoles in their yards in the first place.
Lol, and I thought our ballots are confusing. There were a couple signs pictured that said "Vote no on 2" which is an amendment to the state constitution relating to abortion (no is in favor of abortion/yes is against) but the amendments on the ballot are always worded so confusingly that it's damn near impossible to be sure which side you're voting for without doing some independent research.
I wish we could do it the way you do, it'd be a lot less of an eyesore that way. It does set a pretty low threshold for normalizing more extreme groups though. I'm still chuckling at seeing the Pirate Party on one of those signs in your post.