Buried deep in the commentaries on Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" is this little
cliché on psychological warfare: "Appear to be where you are not."

What better example in campaigns than "sign" battles.

Last night, out for the first time supporting my favourite local municipal
candidate who was discussing the sudden proliferation of Delanty signs, I
was able to discover the probable cause within a half hour of canvassing:
put signs up on the front lawns of clearly absent homeowners.

I first learned this on my first campaign at the tender age of 19 in ,<snip>
Centre while working for provincial <snip>.  I also saw it in use devastatingly by Audrey MacClaughlin's
people in the Yukon in the '93 federal election-not to say that this is an
NDP trick (although campaign managers with former trade union backgrounds
would probably be familiar with it) but rather that it is a tactic that
lends itself well to "grassroots" campaigns like municipal elections.

The method is simple: when your people are doing their first "knock and
drop" note the homes where the mail has piled up for a few days and where
there doesn't appear to be anyone home.  Should your timing be right and the
conditions (in the <snip> case it was an election during harvest season and
all the farmers who had winter residences in the city, or their sons or
daughters, were back home taking the crop off.  In the Yukon, it was moose
hunting season.  Here we have a lot of weekend residents/commuters.) you
plunk down the signs.  Most times incumbents do this for obvious reasons.
Rarely does the homeowner say anything sometimes suspecting their spouse or
a friend has suggested it and if they do call to complain the sign chair
apologizes profusedly about misplaced addresses, overzealous campaign
workers, and offers to have the candidate call.  The general effect is the
sign stays up.  As well rarely do inexperienced canvassers of your opponent
knock on the door of a house where the rival's sign is up.

However, if one is going to do this, one shouldn't leave one's weathered
brochure with the words "Sorry I missed you" in the same mailbox as two
weeks of flyers and other door-to-door material.  If you missed them, how
did you get the sign location?  Especially not at three houses in the same
poll.

'nuff said.