As I write this, election posters have been up in Ireland for fewer than 24 hours. By the time you read this, that will have extended to about 36 hours. I am already aware of three campaigns, in the time since it became legal for posters to be erected, who have received agitated emails from largely self-appointed “tidy towns” committees declaring that their particular area is a no-go-zone for election posters. Over the coming days and weeks, more candidates will fall into that pitfall.
Candidates, really, have no choice but to comply with such extra-legal decrees from the guardians of democratic tidiness who appoint themselves in various towns and villages around the country: In my experience from prior years of campaigning, those who care about such things tend to take a fanatical, borderline maniacal pleasure in working hard to blacken the name of any candidate or party who breaches their decree against postering. Candidates nervous about votes then quickly bark out orders to whoever’s listening to “get the bloody things down”.
The nature of politics is simply that some laws can be enforced, and some cannot. The law – as laid out by local county councils – permits postering by candidates on public lamp-posts and various other designated areas. Yet in every election, various vigilante organisations appoint themselves as the representative body for various communities and enforce what amount to laws against postering, despite the fact that nobody elected them or granted them the authority to so do. They do not present it as such, of course: Requests are politely issued, with the unspoken mail fist concealed in the velvet glove of “a request from the community”.
This is, unquestionably, bad for our democracy. And one of the reasons it is tolerated is that such policies broadly favour established parties over newcomers.
Political advertising in Ireland is regulated more tightly than almost anywhere else in the western, democratic world. Unlike the USA, Canada, Australia, or New Zealand, candidates cannot buy advertising on television or on local radio stations. There are significant moves underway to regulate online advertising. Media outlets, absurdly, often assign airtime and coverage on the basis of votes received in the last election, meaning that last time’s winners get an advantage, even if they are now unpopular.
Posters and leaflets are basically the only tool that a candidate has, if he or she wishes to introduce themselves and their candidacy to a large number of voters.
It is of course true that many people find posters unsightly. A sensible democracy would tell those people to get over themselves and put up with it: Our election campaigns last four weeks. They should feel grateful that they are not the poor yanks, who’ve been hearing about this year’s Presidential election on their TVs for over a year, and who still have six months and billions of dollars in advertising to endure.
Democracies only work with informed voters. The price of informed voters is election campaigns that seek to inform them and educate them about where candidates stand and who – and what – those candidates represent. In Ireland, for twenty or more years now, there have been progressive attempts to restrict and regulate campaigning. It started with the absurd broadcast moratorium, which argues that any major news event concerning an election should not be broadcast or mentioned if it occurs in the hours before an election. It has continued with the various efforts to set up a neutral electoral commission to “inform” voters, which ultimately amounts to the state trying to do the voters’ job for them.
It is, ultimately, the responsibility of every voter to look at the materials, listen to the arguments, and make an informed decision about whether to vote and for whom to vote if they do. But instead, the trend has been in the opposite direction: to pamper and accommodate the most cynical, performatively jaded voters. To essentially institutionalise the idea that democracy is a nuisance, and a waste of time and materials, and that it would be nicer if – in our village at least -the elections just went away.
Who does this benefit?
Well, naturally enough, it benefits those already in power, whose names and images are already known and whose existing “party machines” are already established. The concerted impact of all this stuff – from advertising restrictions to poster bans – is to tamp down and dumb down debate, treating the discussion of the future of our country as a boring nuisance activity engaged in by cranks and nobody else.
One of the healthiest things that could happen in our democracy would be for self-appointed poster-banners to be roundly ignored by candidates. It’s one of those prisoners dilemma situations: If everybody simply ignored the tidy townsmen, and agreed to report the taking down of their posters as a crime, the power of such busybodies would fade into nothing overnight. The situation only persists because candidates, terrified of alienating voters, permit it to exist.
Election posters go up for four weeks. Failure to take them down when the election is over accrues crippling fines. Elections happen, on average, once every two and a half years. Putting up with some clutter on the lampposts is a very small price to pay for living in a country where we get to be consulted about how we should be ruled.