The blowdry, the clothes, the names... Yes, I do love a decent election poster

KENMARE and Killarney have banned them completely. In Roscommon, election candidates have been politely asked not to hang them up, and there’s some class of a row breaking out in both Westport and Clondalkin over the presence of hopeful people’s faces on lampposts. It seems an awful lot of people don’t like election posters.

Even before the posters proper went up at the end of last week, there was a certain amount of eye rolling – at least in my local area – about what I like to think of as the Zero Zero posters: the political equivalent of drinks companies advertising their non-alcohol alternatives as, well, an alternative to the banned promotion of alcoholic brands.

These are the posters that have been lurking near the treetops for weeks: notices for coffee mornings about crèche spaces, information evenings about making a will, meetings about bus corridors – all adorned with the giant, grinning heads of whichever would-be councillors were hoping to get a jump on the competition.

‘Down with this sort of thing’ would seem to have been the feeling, then, and, bombarded with posters for all parties and none this week, ‘down with this sort of thing in spades’ is the mood around us now.

So I feel I should stand up for all the people whose daily routines are brightened up by these kerbside galleries of heroes and villains currently vying for our attention and our votes. I can’t be the only one who doesn’t enjoy judging these strangers as I pass: critiquing their looks, their smiles, their hair, their clothes, and wondering about their names and if they’re anything to the Burkes or the Delaneys who used to live on the road over.

I like sitting on the upper deck of the bus into town when the posters are up. Meeting the candidates at eye level can reveal who’s dead behind the eyes, who’s got a bouncy blowdry and who’s gone mad altogether with the Photoshop. Being up high also gives commuters a chance to read any slogans appearing on posters, thus allowing them to make a note of who to never, ever vote for – I’m looking at you, Independent Ireland, and anyone with Ireland is Full written on their posters.

But mainly, it’s about the faces. Last weekend, on a trip along the Shannon, the Other Half and I played a sort of superannuated game of Snog, Marry, Avoid with the posters – the jeopardy being that you HAVE to marry whoever appears on the next poster you pass – and I can highly recommend it as a car game on a par with I Spy and Your Gaff.

If there wasn’t a more serious side to this, underneath the sawdust and the greasepaint, then election candidates wouldn’t invest so heavily in postering.

BUT the reality for most candidates in local elections is that they are neither household names nor familiar faces, and postering is a brilliant way to give them a recognition factor in their electoral area. How are you going to collar some luckless councillor about the bollards at the end of your road if you can’t identify him from the madding crowd?

You don’t have to love the posters or the pictures, but there’s no doubt that all this embossed cardboard serves a valuable democratic purpose. They don’t just position two important polls that don’t get the same traction or spark the same interest as general elections to the front of the mind, they serve as an introduction to a whole bunch of hopefuls and, equally, a warning against many more.

And even if you can’t muster the interest to vote for any of them, at worst, you might find yourself engaged to one of them by the time your sat-nav tells you that you’ve reached your destination.

Besides, as I can attest, if you haven’t seen your children slide down a snowy hill on Colm Brophy’s face, you haven’t really experienced the full rich tapestry of Irish politics. Kenmare and Killarney, you don’t know what you’re missing.