JULY 2, 2010 – Note to statewide candidates: If you’re going to break state law on campaign signs, you should at least get rid of the evidence after the election.

Especially if you’re a candidate for attorney general, the person who is supposed to enforce state laws. (That’s you, GOP nominee Alan Wilson.)

According to South Carolina law (code section 57-25-10), it is illegal for political signs to be placed on highway rights of way and “visible from the main traveled way of the highway.  A person violating this section is guilty of a misdemeanor and, upon conviction, may be charged not more than $100 or imprisoned for not more than 30 days.”

Interestingly, a different section of state law says it is also illegal for individuals to put political signs on private property if they are visible from interstates or federal highways and in place for more than 90 days.

It’s pretty clear that most candidates, or at least their campaign volunteers, put signs all over South Carolina’s 47,000 miles of highways and byways, regardless of the law.

But that doesn’t make it right.

Wilson campaign spokesman Adam Piper said the campaign asked its volunteers to put signs only in legal locations. But some, he said, may have been overzealous. In fact, to highlight how much free help the campaign had, he emphasized that Wilson volunteers logged more than 100,000 grassroots phone calls in the two-week runoff period.

“The last thing we want to do is have signs where they are not supposed to be or have signs that are wasting our resources,” Piper said. “That doesn’t excuse the fact that our volunteers were overzealous and may have put signs in places they weren’t supposed to.”

Of course, Wilson isn’t the only offender. In just the last few days, we’ve seen signs for a host of Republican candidates: Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer, Attorney General Henry McMaster, Comptroller General Richard Eckstrom and a host of statewide candidates that lost in the June elections Bill Connor, Kelly, Elizabeth Moffly and Leighton Lord. And those are just the names we’ve seen in the last week in limited driving around the state.

While we have seen hardly any signs for Democratic candidates, maybe that’s just because there weren’t too many Democratic primary candidates – or because some (Alvin Greene?) didn’t campaign much at all.

Regardless, we’ve been struck this year by the apparent concerted effort by Republicans to blanket exit ramps along interstates. Not only is it dangerous for workers to scurry around in the middle of the night erecting these signs, but it is visual clutter.

One senior state employee told us that Republican campaign consultants reportedly encouraged campaigns as a stealthy tactic to put signs at exit ramps – particularly on Thursday nights. (Piper stressed there was no such directive in the Wilson campaign.)

And why on Thursday nights? Because it’s common knowledge that highway road crews generally work a four-day week and if signs are placed on Thursday night, they’ll be visible for at least three full day before there’s a real chance they’ll be taken down.

And with lots of recent state budget cuts, it’s clear the Highway Department is doing less and less to remove the annoying campaign signs.

So now that we’ve got a three or four month hiatus from crazy campaign sign world, it seems like it is time for someone – perhaps the current attorney general whose signs are also littering state byways – to send a message to candidates: Pick up your signs or  face prosecution.