My city (constituting a mighty 2.5 square miles with a population of about 12k) has an ordinance (Chapter 1230.06 of the Zoning Code (.pdf)) prohibiting political campaign yard signs until within 30 days of an election.

Here's the relevant section:

All candidates for public office, their campaign committees or other persons responsible for the posting on private property of campaign material or special announcements, shall not install signs more than thirty days prior to the election or referendum, and shall remove such material within three days following the election or referendum.

For at least a month now there have been dozens of signs around the city for Kerry (and more recently for the Democratic sacrificial lamb for Senate, Eric Fingerhut). There are no signs for Bush or any Republicans that I have seen. By law none of these signs should be displayed until Oct 2.

Now I should be clear that I think these laws are silly. Indeed I think they should be unconstitutional. I think the framers intended the 1st Amendment to apply for more than one month a year! But alas (sigh) our Supreme Court has apparently ruled that "time and place" restrictions on political speech are acceptable constitutionally if they are "content neutral". In my (untrained, unlawyerly) way of thinking, their failure to enforce the code when only one party is violating it questions the "content neutrality"of the city's enforcement.

I have a complaint in with the city (from the first week of August) and a reply from them (Aug 16) to "look into the matter." I bugged them again today. I'll let you know the result.

As far as I'm concerned the best result would be for them to abolish the darned ordinance.