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Camp Hill is a Borough in Cumberland County aka "Harrisburg West Shore"
Posted on 10/26/2022 4:44:22 PM PDT by lightman
It’s a sign of election season.
A Republican group in Camp Hill is suing the Borough to overturn an ordinance that prohibits residents from placing more than two political signs on their property.
The Camp Hill Borough Republican Association calls the ordinance—and the $1,000 fine for placing more than two temporary political signs—unconstitutional, and is asking a federal judge to lift the restriction less than two weeks before election day.
The ordinance in question aims to regulate how, when and where signs are placed, according to the borough’s stated purpose and intent, the lawsuit wrote. It does not seek to limit content on the signs.
However, Marc Scaringi, the lawyer representing the Camp Hill Republicans, said the options are stifling. There are five different races in which voters may wish to support candidates, but residents are limited to only supporting two on their property with political signs.
Posting temporary political yard signs is an inexpensive but effective way for residents to publicly advocate for certain political candidates, according to the lawsuit.
Additionally, the ordinance prevents temporary signs from being displayed more than 60 days prior to an “event” without defining what an event is, and prevents them from being displayed 30 consecutive days at a time, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit accuses the borough of having warned 45 residents about sign ordinance violations in the past 60 days.
In September, Caroline Michiraju, a resident of Camp Hill, placed one sign each for Mehmet Oz, Doug Mastriano and Scott Perry on her yard. After receiving a notice of violation for the three signs, she removed the sign for Scott Perry to avoid a fine—however, she would prefer to support all three candidates with signs in her yard, according to the lawsuit.
The Camp Hill Borough Republican Association encountered a similar problem, according to the lawsuit. It wants to distribute more than two signs to voters, but does not want them to be fined for posting them.
Katherine Pearson, posted just two signs supporting Oz and Mastriano but was also warned for violating the ordinance. That’s because she posted them in early August.
Camp Hill said she violated the ordinance because she posted the signs sooner than 60 days before the event—the event being the Nov. 8, 2022 general election, the lawsuit said.
She subsequently removed her yard signs to avoid the fine.
The GOP group and the borough will debate the ordinance before a federal judge in Harrisburg Thursday morning.
Pennsylvania Ping!
Please ping me with articles of interest.
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Camp Hill is a Borough in Cumberland County aka "Harrisburg West Shore"
Expressing oneself would be considered freedom of speech——we no longer have that (”we”——not woke Leftists.)
Besides filing a suit, get creative. Signs have two sides. Rotate them every day.
These legal but unlawful ordinances and bylaws are ubiquitous, and won’t be overturned without going to court.
My town it is 2 weeks prior to 1 week after, which is loosely interpreted as 2 weeks prior to the primary till 1 week after the election.
The way it mostly works is that folks don’t follow these ordinances/bylaws, and they are not enforced against them. But, then sometimes they are.
I used to live down the street from Camp Hill in Hampden township. I wanted nothing to do with those socialists.
You could put three Joe Biden signs in a Democrat’s yard.
But it might not work, as Joe can’t count.
I never understood the purpose of a political yard sign.
Yard signs (when placed by the property owner) are a signal that “Joe & Mary Smith support John Doe”...and those placed by residences in a neighborhood carry more meaning and gravitas than those placed along highway right of ways and intersections.
Everyone knows that two signs are OK but four are an existential threat to democracy.
It’s science, or something.
More than two must maintain “social distancing”.
Pennsylvania just told the court to go pound sand. Tell these morons to go pound sand and put up as many signs as you want.
There is a small town in Alabama named Camp Hill. It was once a bit more of a town than it is now and had two cotton gins. The great heavyweight boxer, Joe Louis, brought cotton there as a young teen. Today little more than a bus load of Whites live there among about 900 Blacks.
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