Do Campaign Signs Help You Decide Your Vote?

With Nov. 5 less than a month away, Marlboro Township is colored with campaign verbiage again, with both Township Council and Board of Education seats up for grabs.

Democratic incumbents Scott Metzger, Jeff Cantor and Carol Mazzola are running to keep their seats on the Township Council while challenged by Republicans Craig Marshall, Bob Knight and Marielaina LaRosa.

On the Board of Education, incumbents Victoria Dean and Michael Lilonsky are challenged by Rajashree Dixit and Dara Enny for three-year terms. Appointed Board member Debbie Mattos seeks to keep her seat against challenger Paul Schlaflin, each seeking one-year terms.

But all the signs, both tall and short, and all the campaign money it takes to create them, does it matter to you? Do signs decide your vote; will signs remind you to vote on Nov. 5?

A 2012 NPR piece investigate the power of campaign signs with Costas Panagopoulos, a political professor at Fordham University. According to the piece, non-partisan signs place in municipalities yielded higher voter turnout rates in Manhattan.

"We assume that a partisan message could have been as effective - perhaps it would have been more effective, if anything," Panagopoulos said. "I think that it would be very unusual if any of these tactics actually were decisive in elections. I think that there are much more fundamental factors that often determine the outcome of elections."

Do campaign signs work for you?