The best and the worse of Kamloops election signs

There should be a law against bad election signs.

Not all of them — just bad ones, which would eliminate most of the clutter of the current civic-election campaign.

Election signs are there to tell people you are in the race. The silent message is, “Please remember my name when you go into the voting booth.”

Most candidates forget people are speeding past at 60 kmh. Drivers have no time to read your platform. They barely have time to read your name (if you are cursed with a name like Acacia Schmietenknop, which takes up half the alphabet, you have a special challenge).

The best election signs are limited to the candidate’s name and which office he or she is seeking. Forget the catchy slogans, never mind your picture — commuting drivers don’t care about that.

With these fundamentals in mind, let’s look at the best and worst of the current crop.

VERY WORST ELECTION SIGNAGE: Without peer, this award goes to Team Messmer. Ayren Messmer is running for city council; Mitchell Messmer is running for school board. You wouldn’t know this from their signage, which is a train wreck of confusion.

I don’t know whether they’re trying to be cute, or think they’ll get double the bang for their buck, but they have taken simple signage and made a mess of it. The result of their identical designs, and their side-by-side placement, is an unreadable pudding.

RUNNERS UP FOR WORST OF THE WORST: A three-way tie among Chris Ortner, Nancy Bepple and Ken Christian.

I had to park my car and read Ortner’s sign up close just to be able to report to you that it ‘s telling us he is a candidate “Balancing priorities for better solutions.”

Bepple’s say she is “Connected Committed Caring.” Ortner’s slogan is meaningless, Bepple’s sounds as though she’s bragging about who she knows. Keep it simple, folks.

Ken Christian has gone in the opposite direction, to no avail — a sign that says “Elect Ken Christian” is a mistaken assumption that voters know what he’s running for.

HONORABLE WORST MENTION: This goes to Arjun Singh, another recycler. Evidently, his circular signs are supposed to draw our attention, but they are crowded with hard-to-read type.

NICE TRY BUT NO PRIZE: Raymond Nyuli has nice looking signs with great colours that simply don’t work because you can’t read what they say, not even his name. Nelly Dever’s signs are interesting but the words get lost in the splash of colour.

Surely, you say, there must be some good signs out there. I’ve seen three.

THE ENVELOPE PLEASE: Marg Spina follows all the rules. She sticks to her name, which is tilted corner to corner, in heavy readable type, and what she’s running for. In second place are school board candidate Joan Cowden and council candidate Peter Sharp.

I can’t say I like Spina’s washed-out blue colour, nor Cowden’s whimpy green, nor Sharp’s maroon, but they do the job the way it should be done.

Brendan Shaw would have won with his crisp, easy-to-read red font but loses points for including his web address, which is unnecessary information and unnecessary wordage.

Next week, with Halloween out of the way, more signs will be sprouting like daisies. Maybe we’ll see some improvement.