Yard signs have appeared in lawns across Ward 4 in the weeks before the November election, the county’s Office of Electoral Forecasting confirmed Thursday, as the office had predicted in a 31-page outlook released in August.
The outlook projected that signs would begin appearing “approximately six weeks before Election Day, concentrated near sidewalks, facing the street.” Office staff conducted a drive-through count Tuesday and found 1,140 signs, nearly all of them near sidewalks. All of them faced the street.
What the Office Found
“We had a model,” said Benedikt Laramie-Osei, the office’s senior forecaster. “The model said signs. There are signs.” He said the office would publish a revised outlook in two weeks projecting that the signs will be removed, “most of them, eventually, by someone.”
A resident of Corbett Lane, Ida Pfluger-Nakamura, 71, said three signs appeared in her lawn overnight. She said she had agreed to one of them. She has not removed the other two, she said, because they are holding down a tarp.
The office’s next forecast, due November 18, concerns leaves.