IT'S TIME TO GET THOSE SIGNS DOWN

Well, for better or worse, the election is behind us.

First, congratulations to those who won. Running for public office—especially at the local level—is not easy. It takes a tremendous amount of time, energy and, often, money. Winning means the campaign is over and the much more difficult work of actually serving begins.

And to those who came up short, there is no shame in putting your name on a ballot and giving the voters a choice. Losing an election after months of work and anticipation has to be disappointing. Hopefully, after a little rest, many of those candidates will continue finding ways to serve their communities.

Now, winners and losers alike have one last campaign duty to perform.

It's time to pick up the signs.

For months, our roadsides have been covered with them. Big signs. Little signs. Red ones. Blue ones. Homemade ones. Professionally printed ones. Signs tied to fences, driven into yards and clustered around seemingly every major intersection in the county.

That's part of election season.

But election season is over.

Tennessee law places the responsibility on candidates to remove campaign signs that have been placed on highway rights-of-way or other publicly owned property within a reasonable amount of time after an election, with three weeks being the outside limit.

Personally, I don't think it should take anywhere near three weeks.

I've heard candidates say the morning after an election that they intended to have every sign picked up that day. That is certainly a noble goal, but I don't think it is particularly realistic in a countywide race.

A serious campaign may have hundreds—or perhaps thousands—of signs scattered across a county. The candidate probably did not personally put every one of them out, and he or she probably has no idea where every last one ended up.

I don't expect them all to disappear overnight.

But give it a week and make a good-faith effort.

Candidates had volunteers and supporters willing to spend evenings and weekends putting those signs out. Now is the time to send a few text messages, load up the truck and drive those same roads in reverse.

Think of it as the final campaign event.

Private property is another matter. If someone wants to keep a campaign sign in his yard long after the election, that is his business, subject, of course, to whatever local rules apply. If you want to leave it beside the Christmas decorations that are still hanging from the gutters in August, have at it.

But public property is public property.

The temporary privilege of filling our roadsides with campaign advertising comes with an equally reasonable expectation that the advertising goes away once the campaign is finished.

It is partly a matter of appearance. After several months of campaigning, it is nice to see the community return to normal. The election has been decided. The advertisements have served their purpose. Now let's get the roadsides cleaned up.

But I also think it says something about a candidate.

Putting up signs is easy when you want something from the voters. Taking them down after the voters have made their decision—especially when that decision did not go your way—is part of finishing what you started.

That may be an admittedly small measure of responsibility, but sometimes small things tell us something about larger habits.

I would not expect local governments to spend much time or taxpayer money chasing down every leftover political sign. There are more important things for city and county employees to do.

And I certainly would not recommend that citizens start some wild campaign-sign vigilantism, pulling up signs wherever they find them. You may not know whether a particular sign is actually on public or private property, and there is no reason to create a confrontation over a piece of corrugated plastic.

Leave the cleanup to the campaigns and the appropriate authorities.

But candidates and their supporters should take responsibility for what they put out.

If you helped put up signs, help take them down.

If someone allowed you to place one on private property, go retrieve it unless the property owner wants to keep it.

Drive the routes you drove during the campaign and look for the ones you missed.

Three weeks may be the legal outside limit for signs on public property, but hopefully we won't need anywhere near that long.

The voters have spoken. The winners have been congratulated. The candidates who came up short can hold their heads high for having participated in the process.

Now there is just one thing left to do.

Everybody grab a pickup truck.

It's time to get those signs down.