Editorial: Yard-sign thefts violate free speech

From staff reports

Published: October 22, 2008

It’s a pathetic — but predictable — part of every political campaign season. Some small-minded people who disagree with a candidate’s yard sign deface it — or worse, steal it altogether.

Is that part of Virginia’s political tradition, a tradition that gives candidates and their supporters the right to present their ideas by way of the signs to the public? Of course not.

Defacing political yard signs is a despicable, cowardly act achieved only by someone who does not have the courage of his convictions to stand up for his own views. The most courage that person can summon up is to sneak into someone’s yard — their private property by the way — in the dark of night and deface or steal the yard sign.

Mark Varah, who lives on Burnt Bridge Road, has twice been the victim of such an act. Someone stole the large sign in his yard supporting presidential candidate Barack Obama in the middle of the night. A few days after he replaced it, he got up the next morning to find that it had been defaced with a spray-painted circle and a line drawn through it.

Pat Newskyj, who lives in Campbell County, also found herself the victim of some spineless opponent of Obama. She returned to her house one day to find her sign supporting Obama torn in half. She replaced it and two days later it was stolen. A third sign is located closer to the house in hopes that it won’t be damaged or stolen.

“It’s our right to have a choice,” she said last week. “It bothers me that people would do this ... . It is sad that there is this kind of thinking in this country. It would never cross my mind to pull somebody’s sign up.”

While the Democratic presidential candidate seems to be the victim this time around, Republicans have found themselves victimized in the past. And Mark Peake, chairman of the Lynchburg Republican Committee, is just as critical of those who commit such an act as the Democratic leader. “It is disrespectful and not the way to support your candidate,” he said. “If you want to support a candidate, do it by putting up your own sign. Don’t take other signs down.”

John Lawrence, chairman of the Lynchburg Democratic Committee, condemned the thefts and destruction of signs, saying, “It’s a shame that people are trying to stifle freedom of expression and are intolerant of any other point of view. It’s rather juvenile, silly and unfair.”

The act is also illegal. Taking a political sign amounts to larceny, said Capt. Wayne Duff of the Lynchburg Police Department. Larceny is a Class 1 misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail and a fine. Those who mar or damage signs can be charged with vandalism, which is also a Class 1 misdemeanor.

That yard sign is as much an expression of the owner’s political views as the spoken word or the written word in letters to the editor, for example. That freedom of expression is protected by the Constitution. It’s a basic right of all Americans.

So let’s stop the thefts and defacing and let voters have their say with yard signs and other expressions of support for their candidates. The signs are part of the political process that deserve to be protected by all voters representing all views across the political spectrum.

Anyone who would steal or deface them is not only spineless, he does not understand one of the most basic freedoms of that process.