Last week, the Ellis County clerk stopped me to tell me that my yard sign for her opponent, Dottie Staab, at my office west of the courthouse, would have to be taken down because it "is too close to the courthouse." Having had a lifelong interest in the law, I knew that there must be a law somewhere that she might be relying on, so I looked it up.

Indeed, there's a state statute that says there can't be any "electioneering" within 250 feet of the entrance to a polling place. Of course, there is a brief time that the county clerk's office is used as an advance polling site, starting last Wednesday. Research revealed that the reason for this law is to keep people from being bothered by campaigners as they go to the polls. Now, the sign I have up is the same size as the signs I have put up for various candidates over the years, in the same place, but none of them were running against the incumbent county clerk, so it must not have seemed as important to her to get those down. I really realized the seriousness of the problem when I learned that the county clerk's deputy called Dottie Staab's house and told her that the sign her supporter (that's me) had up west of the courthouse needed to come down and that, in the past, they have gone out and removed signs "they" (I think she meant the county clerk) decided were too close.

I paced off the distance from the sign to the courthouse, and sure enough, it was only about 240 feet to the courthouse door from the Dottie Staab sign. The actual starting place for measurement is the "polling site," which would be the county clerk's office, about 50 feet down the hall of the second floor, so the sign is actually OK where it is. I had already told the county clerk that I not only was not going to take the sign down, but I might put more up, and that I thought maybe the First Amendment might trump her ordinary statute, but upon further reflection, I decided that I would help her police up the area, so I am planning on moving the one sign back a few more feet and the other three or four I will put up will be back aways, too. I will have to get bigger ones, though, so people will still be able to read them as they drive by. I invite the driving public to take a look at the Dottie Staab signs at 13th and Fort, at least 251 feet from the advance polling site. If anyone has any trouble seeing them, please pull into our parking lot, and there will be a good view from there, too.

In the meantime, I realized that if it's illegal for me to have the sign within 250 feet of the polling site, it is also illegal for any of the cars in the courthouse parking lot to have any political bumper stickers on them, so please help me report any of those to the clerk, and, if any of the offices in the courthouse get the newspaper, they will need to cancel their subscriptions, since there are political ads in there, and, I see a lot of political things on the Internet, so I hope all the computers in the courthouse get shut off until the election is over.

Maybe after the election, we can go back to worrying about how to get more people registered to vote and out to vote for the elections. I hope Dottie Staab gets that county clerk job, because I think she will worry more about encouraging voting than discouraging it.

John T. Bird

200 W. 13th