FRENCHTOWN TOWNSHIP, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – A Donald Trump supporter is upset that her political signs were removed from the public land owned by the township in which she lives.
What happened?
Kathleen Bressler lives in Frenchtown Charter Township in Monroe County and said township officials removed her Trump signs. Bressler said the signs were placed on township property on Oct. 27 about five feet from the road in front of the township hall. The next day, they were removed. Bressler said the signs were more than 100 feet away from the township building.
Bressler is an election worker and has seen political signs where she put her signs on past election days. She said when she asked the township deputy clerk what happened, Bressler was told the deputy clerk ordered the signs removed because clerks from other townships within Monroe County were having them removed.
“I’m just trying to get to the truth of the matter,” Bressler said.
Township officials respond.
Kyle Bryant, the Frenchtown Charter Township clerk, said the Trump signs were removed after consultation with an attorney.
“I personally don’t have an issue with the signs, but after several complaints and accusations of misconduct on my end by allowing them, I was forced to consult with our Township attorney and the information we received from the Michigan Township Association is pasted below,” Bryant said in an email.
According to Bryant, the Michigan Township Association stated, “The Campaign Finance Act prohibits the use of public funds, property or personnel to campaign for a candidate or ballot question, even on Early Voting Days and Election Day. The 100-foot limit is a statutory compromise balancing a voter’s right to enter a polling place and vote ‘un-accosted’ and the right to political free speech; it is not statutory permission to use public property to campaign outside that 100-foot line.
A township board has authority to regulate campaign materials and activities on Election Day. A township may remove unattended campaign signs or other materials from township property outside of the 100-foot limit which are posted on township property on an Early Voting or Election Day.”
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Bryant added: “If a person is handing out campaign materials or holding the campaign sign, they may remain outside the 100-foot limit but the person needs to accompany the sign was our understanding of that opinion.”
Frenchtown Charter is located in Monroe County where almost twice as many people voted for Trump than Biden in the presidential primaries held earlier this year.
What is legal is dependent on state and local laws.
The state law says this: “On election day, a person shall not post, display, or distribute in a polling place, in any hallway used by voters to enter or exit a polling place, or within 100 feet of an entrance to a building in which a polling place is located any material that directly or indirectly makes reference to an election, a candidate, or a ballot question. Except as otherwise provided in section 744a, this subsection does not apply to official material that is required by law to be posted, displayed, or distributed in a polling place on election day.”
Local laws vary.
In the city of Monroe, which is about four miles south of Frenchtown Charter, political signs are not allowed on any city property. And no signs are to be placed in the right-of-way between the sidewalk and the curb except for real estate open house signs under certain conditions, according to Amy Mohr, the city of Monroe communications
specialist.
The website Scenic Michigan sells a sign guidebook to advise people on what in legal in terms of signs. Scenic Michigan pointed to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 decision in Reed v. Town of Gilbert as changing the landscape of what is allowed in terms of political signs. That ruling found, according to Michigan State University, that “regulations that categorize signs based on the type of information they convey (e.g. temporary, political and ideological) and then apply different standards to each category are content-based regulations of speech and are not allowed under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.”
Scenic Michigan stated that “many, if not most” local sign regulations conflict with the Supreme Court ruling.
Bressler made statewide news in 2016 when she came up with a way to deter vandals from stealing her Trump signs she put up in her yard. Bressler has many cats and sprinkled used, dirty cat litter around her Trump signs so that anyone who walked to take the signs would have something to remember.
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