Congratulations and thanks to all those candidates who made sure to follow the parish law and remove their campaign signs within 10 days of the election.

There doesn’t have to be much question about whether the majority of people like the seemingly hundreds of campaign signs everywhere for the three months before the election. Clearly we would rather they were not there.

But of course it is understandable that when election time comes, we know the signs will be around, like it or not.

We even saw billboards start as early as January of this year, and thanks to a parish law that keeps candidates from putting up the smaller signs all over the place until 90 days before the election, it at least kept the clutter all along our roadways down for a while.

But now that the election is past the 10 day point since voting occurred on October 20, we appreciate the majority of candidates who went out and removed their signs as required by the parish.

However, there are plenty of signs still up that shouldn’t be.

Obviously candidates still in a runoff on November 17 are allowed to keep their signs up. But just driving on Airline Highway in St. John Parish, and even on one or two of the other major roads near Airline Highway, signs can be seen for Randal Gaines, Perry Bailey, Arnold Labat, Jacqlyn Hotard, Matthew Ory and Steve Guidry. There may be others, but those particular signs can be seen far more than one or two times and need to be taken down.

The clutter of the campaign season is something that is not a pleasant sight in any parish around the state, when that time of the year comes. But of course, everyone has to put up with it and does.

However when the election is over, we certainly expect all candidates to be responsible enough to make sure their signs don’t remain. Some of those candidates mentioned have obviously made an effort to get most of their signs, however some are still remaining on main thoroughfares. We hope they will join with the others who already picked up their signs, and make sure our parish is as tidy as possible now that the election is over.