Election billboard vandals waste parties’ time and money

Three weeks out from the election, candidates are concerned the political discourse is being diluted after wide-scale vandalism and destruction of their electoral hoardings.

Nikki Kaye, National Party candidate for Auckland Central, says it is “pretty common in election campaigns”. “It is a cost to the campaign and so it is supporters’ time and money that is being wasted. The cost to the public is about people having less of an opportunity to see who all the candidates are that are running.

“It is a really important part of the democratic political process to give people that opportunity and it is a bit gutting that some people want to take that away from members of the public.”

Stephen Franks, National Party candidate for Wellington Central, does not mind slight modifications to the hoardings.

“Moustaches and glasses drawn on can be quite humorous,” he says. He does object to the wanton destruction of hoardings though, and he says while many of the vandals may think that destroying the hoardings is funny, they are actually trying to win an argument by suppressing others’ ability to convey their views.

Franks says “pamphlets tend to be too expensive” under the Electoral Finance Act, so the communication between the public, politicians and the media has changed.

“Billboards and hoardings are a primitive form of communication but the EFA shut down the pamphlet possibility.”

Franks says he lost 15 hoardings in one night, each costing between $50 and $80. Franks says hoarding destruction is “undemocratic” and “is a nasty, negative way to campaign and symbolically reminds of regimes where force is used to suppress argumentS.”

Kate Sutton, Labour Party candidate for Epsom, agrees with Franks’ view on hoarding destruction.

“Elections are about democracy, and defacing and degrading hoardings does not help candidates and parties promote their messages. There are ways of protesting against parties or candidates by voting against them at the election rather than destroying their property.” She says all the candidates seem to be targeted equally in Epsom “with similar graffiti on all of our hoardings”.

“We have volunteers that go around and put back up hoardings that have been knocked over. Therefore there is a cost and it is a shame that people feel the need to destroy hoardings.”

Michael Pringle, the Green Party’s national administrator, believes that any vandalism, even defacing is “unacceptable”. But it happens all too often. Pringle says his party’s hoardings “not lending themselves to mockery”, with pictures of children and the simple slogan “vote for me”, is one way they avoid getting damaged as often.

“Ours are being targeted, but it is nice to think that they are liked more than the other parties.”

Kaye doesn’t have any solid theories on who is behind the vandalism. “People will make their own conclusions about who it could be. However, I am getting a lot of support from voters as many people are assuming that it is other political parties up to dirty tricks rather than vandals. “Some of the damage is probably being done by people who think it’s fun to damage hoarding and other damage is done by people who are politically opposed to you.”

Sutton says, “It’s people of all ages and backgrounds. I have seen young kids and grown men tagging and knocking down hoardings.”