When driving North or South along the I-5 corridor in Washington, there are a few billboards that don't try to advertise a commercial product you can buy, but rather they merely try to change your opinion. For examples, there are a couple religious ones, which typically quote the Christian bible, and there are a couple political ones, which have a picture of Uncle Sam saying things like, "Does Gov Lock drive away jobs?" It appears that someone (or a group) who owns some land adjacent to the freeway put up a giant billboard (or simply rents one), and displays their opinions.
You don't have much influence with your single vote. It is hardly a drop in the bucket. But to have your own billboard is quite another matter. I counted around 60 vehicles per minute going by it on a Sunday evening. Assuming that each has around two people on average, that comes out to roughly 2 people/vehicle * 60 vehicles/minute * 60 minutes/hour * 24 hours/day * 365.25 days / year = 63,115,200 people passing the billboard each year. I would call this an unrealistic upper bound for unique viewers of the billboard, so let's assume [reaching up ass and pulling out:] half this rate for the average whole day, only a fifth are unique viewers, and only half actually read the sign. Still, that leaves 3,155,760 unique viewers per year. If half of them vote and you positively influence the minds of only say, 10%, your vote has become 157,788 votes! Owning property adjacent to a busy freeway may be undesirable due to the noise and air pollution, but if you don't mind adding to the visual pollution, the electoral influence or plain advertising such property affords seems incredibly valuable. Of course you can express your opinion by purchasing advertising, but rarely is it so inexpensive.
Posted by seander at July 27, 2003 11:10 PM