SALT LAKE CITY — Election season can be contentious. Every year there are reports of people stealing campaign signs. This month, a Utah man went viral for his method to secure his signs.
He had enough and a TikTok video he posted has gone viral.
It shows his solution to keep would-be thieves from getting away with the signs in his yard. He chained them to his fence so anyone who grabbed one wouldn't get far with it.
Others, though, didn't go to those lengths. Sophia Van Nederveen came across a whole pile of signs near her home in Millcreek on Wednesday.
“Just thrown in a pile, just discarded. I thought that was really messed up,” said Van Nederveen. “This is the land of the free. Everyone's entitled to their own opinion and free speech and no one has the right to remove theirs from their property.”
Rather than pass them by, she took action and was amazed at the response.
“I posted in the neighborhood app. Immediately it got traction," she said. "People in the area were saying, ‘Yeah my sign was stolen. I've had three signs stolen.’”
She offered to reunite people with the 15 signs she discovered.
“I actually got a lot of hits. I delivered 9 signs to people yesterday and three more today. It's just been kind of a whirlwind thing,” said Van Nederveen.
Salt Lake County Clerk Lannie Chapman said thefts like this frustrate her.
“The First Amendment is so critically important to all of us here in the United States. We all deserve to be able to have our speech and not have it destroyed or diminished by anyone else.”
She said her office hasn't heard of a particularly large number of cases this year. She said if your sign is stolen, the best bet is to reach out to law enforcement.
“We could learn to be a bit more tolerant of learning other people have different opinions and that's okay. It doesn't diminish our opinion and our voice at all,” said Chapman.
Theft of a campaign sign is a Class-B misdemeanor, which could mean up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.
