It's a rite of passage for every political dogsbody with aspirations to higher things: putting out election corflutes by the side of the road at all kinds of miserable hours overnight.
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But campaigners from all sides say the signs can easily become a distraction, even if it feels good to have them out for campaign momentum.
City Services rangers are conducting daily patrols to keep signs out of illegal spots. On Monday, 37 signs were removed from Flemington Road after being placed along the light rail route, which is banned.
Very early on Tuesday morning, Kacey Lam and her volunteers were robbed at gunpoint putting signs up in Evatt, with their wallets, keys and phones stolen.
And later in the week, a video was shared on social media of a man in Kambah destroying Labor party corflutes while very loudly making his grievances with the party clear.
Given the hours invested in corflutes, are they still worth the hard work - and risks?
Chief Minister Andrew Barr said they were a low-cost way for people to get their name and face into the community and the ACT's limitations on corflutes were some of the toughest in the country.
Recycled corflutes also have the power to show up the ageing impact of time spent in public life.
"For those of us who've run in a few elections, noticing how old you look, the passing of time. I've certainly noticed the hairline thinning and a few more wrinkles than was in the case in some of my first campaign corflutes," Mr Barr said.
He said a trend to front-yard corflutes could be the compromise if public sentiment moved against the proliferation of signs on public land.
"Personally, this time, the balance of mine are more in people's front yards than they are in the side of the road," he said.
I want to be able to drive down Limestone and see the trees that are flowering, not have my attention grabbed, which is what those things do to me.
- Greens campaign director Clancy Barnard
ACT Labor secretary Melissa James said there was plenty of attachment within the party's ranks to the traditional element of corflute campaigning. There was a kind of team-building camaraderie that could come with night-time missions putting them out, she said. But they could also be a distraction.
"It can take you off the important work of actually talking to people and can give people a false sense of security or false sense of someone campaign. Potentially that's part of it: you think, because someone's got a lot of signs out, that means they've got a good presence. It doesn't necessarily accord at all," Ms James said.
"It's interesting - people can get a bit side tracked by it all. Definitely the less time spent worrying about corflutes the better in my view."
Ms James, who is also the Labor Party's campaign director, said corflutes by themselves had little value, but as long as they still resonated with people they would be a useful tool.
"It's about having the direct conversations, which are very effective. And the leaflets, which are a little less effective but you can get more detail, and then the corfluting, which is meant to reinforce name recognition," she said.
"It's not meant to be the whole story or anything like that. Definitely hear people's frustration at time with the signs, equally hear, when you do street stalls and things like that, people getting quite excited and saying, 'I saw the sign and it was good to see it out.'"
Ms James said if there was enough of a move to get rid of them, it's something the Labor Party would think about.
"The last thing any candidate should ever want to do is upset members of the public really," she said.
Canberra Liberals campaign director Josh Manuatu did not respond before deadline.
Dr Andrew Hughes, a lecturer at the Australian National University's college of business and economics who is an expert in political advertising, said the proliferation of corflutes showed ACT campaign spending laws had little bite.
He said because the signs were cheap and there was no limit on the number a party could produce, as long as the total cost was under the campaign spending limit, parties would continue to use them.
The only option was to place a cap on the number of signs allowed for each party in each electorate, something the major parties would likely never contemplate, he said.
"It's better for us as voters, because that way we're not bombarded or have a sense that it's visual pollution and really annoying and quite in our face at times. Literally in our faces. It makes it fairer, too, for minor parties," Dr Hughes said.
Dr Hughes said corflutes made people angry because it was over the top, not because they were necessarily political.
"It's the number of ads which people are exposed to that makes them upset. It's not actually necessarily the fact they're political ads or materials, it's more the fact that they're just so many of them," he said.
Making people emotional about politics was thought to be a good campaign strategy, because it could engage people with political issues, Dr Hughes said.
"But it's not necessarily a good thing. The theory goes that because you become more emotionally engaged with information then you have more reason - or motivational relevance, it's called - to look at that information.
"But it's not true. It doesn't work like that, because you have to find that information relevant to you at that particular point in time."
Corflutes run the risk of irritating voters - and negative emotions are the last thing advertisers want consumers, or voters, to associate with their brand. Yet political parties are prepared to risk it.
"In Canberra, the campaign cap means [corflutes are] cheap, political parties think they're effective," Dr Hughes said.
"This is the other strange thing: when I've talked to political campaigners, they still believe in ... the old-school of campaigning, which is carpet bombing basically, which is just we'll bombard you with campaign material because we can, because we're allowed to. Because we've written laws into being which means we can do stuff other organisations are not allowed to do legally."
The Greens have taken a different stance, choosing to only place biodegradable cardboard election signs in supporters' front yards rather than beside public roads. The party has also called for corflutes to be banned.
ACT Greens campaign manager Clancy Barnard said there were some party members who wanted to have corflutes out, worried by the sheer number of competing parties' signs, but the no corflute approach showed the party was different.
"We don't believe in visual pollution. To me, there's the environmental impact of it, but I really think that we should have the right to get around our city without having our vision stolen. And that's what all outdoor forms of outdoor advertisement is to me, including, I think, these roadside corflutes," Mr Barnard said.
"I want to be able to drive down Limestone and see the trees that are flowering, not have my attention grabbed, which is what those things do to me."