An open letter to everyone that just ran for elected office in New Jersey: the party's over. It's time to clean up.

It's amazing to sit back and think of the millions and millions of dollars that were spent over the past several weeks on radio and TV commercials, giant pieces of mail, and, of course, countless signs all to get your vote.

And now that the party is over and we're just about done counting early votes, day-of votes, mail-in votes, absentee votes, and provisional votes, it's time to clean up the mess.

As I learned yesterday, apparently, it's up to each town or municipality to determine when political signs have to be removed -- which is shocking since practically every other aspect of life in New Jersey has some type of state-level law or executive order to regulate it.

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And seeing thousands of political signs every election cycle makes me ask this question: has anyone ever been moved to vote for someone based solely on a sign that is stuck in someone's yard? I'm guessing probably not.

The whole idea behind political signs is to increase the awareness of a person's name, which is fine, but in an election, things like sky-high property taxes, education, quality of life, rising crime, and numerous social issues are going to make someone vote for one person over another -- not a crooked sign hammered into the ground next to a red light.

And some of these political sign farms are insane. Take, for example, this intersection in Egg Harbor Township (which has been cleaned up -- thank you!).

A political sign farm in Egg Harbor Township NJ - Photo: Chris Coleman
A political sign farm in Egg Harbor Township NJ - Photo: Chris Coleman
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I don't care what party you represent. I don't care what office you are running for. This is ridiculous. This doesn't make me vote for you. This makes me think you are trashing an area that you hope to get votes from.

A political sign farm in Egg Harbor Township NJ - Photo: Chris Coleman
A political sign farm in Egg Harbor Township NJ - Photo: Chris Coleman
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And if you can put all of these signs up in about 20 minutes, you can take them down just as quickly.

The election (in theory) ended days ago. Clean up the mess.

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