As I read about Hillary Clinton and other political ghouls descending on the Iowa Fair, I shake my head in wonder.  They aren't going to get to interact in any meaningful way with more than a handful of voters.  If they sway votes, it will be because voters see Hillary Clinton putting a foot-long in her mouth or Bernie Sanders making a hairpiece out of cotton candy.  In other words, totally irrelevant information.

And then I started thinking about the popularity of political lawn signs.  They seem so meaningless.  They don't state any positions of the candidate; in fact, they often don't even state the name of the candidate's party, but just the candidate's name.  But campaigns spend millions of dollars promoting them.

Because they work.  People see them, and they think, "I don't know anything about this candidate.  All I see is the name.  But people I don't know in  my neighborhood support her.  Therefore, I should as well."  This lemming-like philosophy probably extends to many other matters as well.  See a lot of people buying a product?  Chances are many others will take a look.  See a lot of people driving up an unfamiliar road to the edge of a tall cliff?  Some people might follow there, too, to see where it goes.

The problem is, like the cliff example, doing that in politics leads to bad results.  Unless you know your specific neighbors who have the signs and know their ideology, the signs are about as meaningful as complete strangers telling you that so-and-so was a great movie.  Their tastes may not be yours.

Adults are adults in so many ways – they can drive cars, pay bills, and go to work.  But when it comes to politics, so many of them have a political IQ of a child – "He looked good on TV!  She ate a hot dog in Iowa like regular people!  My neighbor has a lawn sign!"  Maybe this is a sign of a lack of education in schools about basic issues, such as how an economy works, how jobs are created, common issues in current affairs, and so on.  Of course, if these things were taught more aggressively in schools, they would undoubtedly be taught from a socialist or Marxist perspective.  Right now, the only political subjects taught in school are "green" excessivism and racial and gender animosity, and that is too much "political" education already.

What the success of political signs reveals is that many people vote on peripheral issues without informing themselves.  And when voters can be swayed by things like simple signs that say nothing other than a name, our democracy is in peril.

This article was produced by NewsMachete.com, the conservative news site.