Time to do something about election posters?

08-06-2022 5:57pm #1

Senator Pauline O'Reilly from the Green, has a proposal to put a lot of restrictions around the use of election posters

http://www.greenparty.ie/news/green-party-bill-cut-back-waste-and-clutter-posters-election-time

Some of the main points are:

Regulate the placement of election posters and referendum material to ‘designated areas’, chosen by the relevant Local Authority.
Ensure the advertising of election candidates and referendums is cleaner, safer and less wasteful.
Ensure it is fairer for independent candidates and candidates from smaller parties.

The bill itself

https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/bills/bill/2022/53/

Some examples of how it could be done

https://twitter.com/ciarancannon/status/1534463390218870787?s=20&t=lDe5sW_qOYtaLLLRALsjwA

https://twitter.com/dublin1al/status/1534483832627417088?s=20&t=lDe5sW_qOYtaLLLRALsjwA

Personally I think this is a good idea and hopefully comes into force. Its honestly a bit farcical how many posters there are at GE time

What do ye reckon? Good idea/bad idea?

Hotblack Desiato · 14-06-2022 11:15pm

It was relatively harmless in the old days when it was cardboard and twine, and of course there was no internet to get your message out back then. But now it's plastic posters, plastic ties, none of it recyclable and usually the ties are left there to poke the eye out of unwary tall people (it's ridiculous how many posters get crammed onto the more popular lampposts in Dublin city centre, so the bottom one is often at head height)

Then there were some truly offensive posters in 2015 and 2018 from the No side (I would have said 'sides' but it's always the same crowd) displayed prominently for weeks on end. A particularly explicit one went up right outside my kids' primary school during the abortion referendum campaign. It didn't last the night... this in what for years has been a voluntary no-postering area which works well. All of the approach roads to the village centre always get plastered with posters though so overall the number of posters in the area is the same...

About 15 years ago a sitting TD in my constituency had the "brainwave" of making her posters (text-only, no picture) in the shape of yellow diamonds the same size as a road sign, how flippin' stupid was that?

kirk. · 14-06-2022 11:29pm

Or scrap them completely

I don't need them anyway

Podge_irl · 14-06-2022 11:44pm

Absolutely, they are a massive blight. You could start with enforcing current rules on them, but even those are too generous.

Beyond being aesthetically offensive, they are also dangerous in terms of crowding out actual important signage.

Time to do something about election posters?

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