Obviously sick of America’s corrupt two-party system (fuck, who isn’t?), the spouse and I are both registered members of the Working Families Party (WFP). If you’ve not heard of the WFP: yeah. I know. It’s tiny, and represents about 0.05% of voters in the US as of writing - mostly in New York and Oregon.

But the WFP represents a few things we care about. First is the right policies: we support civil rights, the transition to renewable energy is nonnegotiable, war in Iran is not justifiable, etc. I won’t bore you with copying down every part of WFP’s positions we agree with, or the occasional things the WFP’s done which we disagree with. But of political parties in the US, they are mostly aligned to our values, they have a practical approach, and they are among the least staffed with Holden Bloodfeast-likes.

Second is that the WFP can choose to run their own candidates or back other candidates via fusion voting, so in elections where a third party will not reasonably win (which is often, because WFP membership is tiny today) this can help avoid spoiler effects. This allows the WFP to influence larger parties as it grows until (and unless) it could reasonably contend on its own in larger elections. Of course, this is far from ideal and the right choice long-term would be something like ranked choice voting, but I doubt that’s coming at the national level any time soon.1

And third, we now own a house. With a lawn! Which is an incredible thing to say as a pair of … young millennials? Old zoomers? Anyway. Our house is surrounded by nice houses filled with nice people, some of whom with yard signs of their own, and once in a while those yard signs are for truly dog shit candidates and political positions - as is their right. But we felt we should have a sign of our own as a counterweight.

Since the WFP doesn’t have signs available for purchase on their store - which is crazy! lawn-based proselytizing is the very foundation of this democracy - I spent some time making a simple, unofficial design of my own with WFP colors and WFP-inspired font, and then had it printed:

A purple yard sign staked in our lawn. It reads "A better America for you & me" and "Vote Working Families" in white and yellow, with the orange Working Families Party wolf logo, yellow north star, and workingfamilies.org on a red bar.

I’ll remind you that I’m not a marketer or a designer, but I think it came out okay! I wanted something that I can put back out year after year, rather than evangelizing specific candidates and then throwing the signs out after election season. I also chose a simple message which focuses on shared hope, shared benefit to us as individuals, and encourages the reader to look into the WFP’s platform. It’s not the snappiest, it’s not going to be in the hall of fame for best designs, yadda yadda.

If it encourages even a couple passers-by to look into the WFP, I’ll be happy. :)

If you want to print your own, modify or remix it, etc., here are links to the design at various sizes. I included an SVG (which is best if you want to scale or modify it) and a 300 DPI PNG. All include 0.125 inch of bleed for printing.

Happy election season, my fellow Americans. May the candidates we have and the choices we make move our country begrudgingly forward.

Appendix

  1. A friend has seen “ranked choice voting is communism, actually” advertisements this election cycle, if that gives you any indication of how much lead is in America’s water supply. ↩