Yard signs and field assets

Outdoor has four layers, each with a map view and a list view: Signs (your campaign's yard signs), Boards (billboards), Opposing (opposition signs and billboards), and Flags (yard flags). A search box finds an address or accepts raw coordinates to drop a pin; a satellite toggle helps you put a sign on the right corner of a lot; a center-on-me button and a blue dot show where you are.

In the app the same feature is the Signs tab, available to every role including precinct chairs. From the phone a volunteer can mark our sign here, mark a flag here, or report an opposing sign at their current location, attach a photo from the camera, and long-press near an existing marker to open and edit it rather than drop a duplicate.

A sign record has a location, a size (from 24 by 18 inches up to 8 by 4 feet, or custom), an optional location label and notes, who installs it, who removes it, a remove-by date that defaults to the Sunday after election day, and a photo. Status runs Pending (planned or promised), Placed, Collected, and Repair for a placed sign that is damaged or knocked down. A sign added from the app is created as Placed with the time and position, because the volunteer is standing there; a sign added on the web is Pending until someone marks it placed.

The list view searches by location, size, or status and lets you assign installers and removers inline. The Assignment list groups signs by volunteer with a Google Maps link and an SMS-ready message, so a volunteer gets their Saturday drops as one link. Placing a sign or reporting an opposing one credits the volunteer on the leaderboard alongside doors knocked.

For bigger drops, staff create a named route: a name, an assigned volunteer, a scheduled date, notes, and a set of pending signs. The route's volunteer is mirrored onto every sign in it, so the mobile app shows the route as its own card with its stops. Routes move through draft, ready, in progress, completed, and canceled, and the route list has the same open-in-maps and copy-SMS actions. Deleting a route unassigns its signs but leaves them on the map.

Opposition signs record the opponent's name, the office, whether it is a yard sign or a billboard, size, address, a photo, and notes, with who reported it and when. Volunteers log them and can mark them removed; only staff can delete a report. Billboards are staff-managed: the company (common vendors are pre-listed), standard sizes from junior poster to super bulletin, contract start and end dates, an image, and notes.

Yard flags are the most useful layer for turnout. A flag is a point a volunteer drops at a house flying a flag. On insert, the database stamps it with the precinct and street address of the nearest voter on the current county roll within about 330 meters, so the Flag list can be filtered by precinct and each row shows a real address rather than coordinates. Flags with no matched voter nearby land in an Unassigned bucket.

Filter the Flag list to a precinct, or leave it on all, and staff get a button: Create voter list from these flags. It builds a static list of every registered voter in the households at the flagged addresses, matched by normalized address and precinct so an identical street name in another town cannot leak in, and limited to voters on the current county roll. The list appears under Lists with a dated name, and from there you generate walks like any other list.

Chairs and volunteers can filter and view the flag list; building the list is a staff-and-above action, like any list creation. A chair who wants a flag-house walk asks a staffer to build the list, then generates and staffs the walk from their own precinct tools.

The map is shared campaign-wide, so the delete rules matter. Every insert, update, and delete on signs, flags, and opposition signs is written to the campaign audit log with the actor, the time, and the before-and-after diff. When someone reports that a sign disappeared, the answer is a query away, and deletes are soft: the record keeps its history and leaves the active map.

• Volunteers and precinct chairs can add and edit signs, flags, and opposition reports, and change a sign's status (placed, collected, repair).
• A volunteer can delete a sign pin they placed themselves. Deleting someone else's pin requires staff.
• Removing a yard flag from the map is open to every volunteer-tier member; hard deletion is staff-only.
• Billboards and named routes are staff and above.
• Deleting an opposition report is staff and above; volunteers mark it removed instead, which keeps it in the history.

Photo ops are a related field asset. In the app's Admin tab a candidate or staffer takes a photo with a supporter, enters their first name, last name, and phone, and the phone's own SMS composer opens with the campaign's template (tokens for first name, last name, candidate, and campaign) and the photo attached. The volunteer presses send, so it is a person-to-person message rather than a campaign blast. The capture is matched to a voter record where the name and phone line up.

The web Photo ops page is the review queue: unmatched captures, fuzzy matches that need a human to pick the right voter, a voter search to link them, and the SMS template editor with a live preview. Once linked, the capture sits on the voter's record like any other contact.

City council, 400 signs. Staff pre-load 400 pending signs from the yes list, group them into eight Saturday routes of 50, and assign each to a volunteer with a truck. Each volunteer gets one Google Maps link by text. As they place, they mark each sign from the app and attach a photo; by Sunday the map shows 380 placed and 20 to chase. The remove-by date is already set for the Sunday after the election.

County party precinct chair, flag houses. Walking her precinct in September she drops 62 flags. In October she filters the Flag list to her precinct; a staffer builds the list, 62 flags become 140 voters, and she generates one walk for the sign ask and a second pass for early-vote reminders.

School board, opposition tracking. Volunteers report 35 opponent signs with photos over two weeks. The map shows the opponent has concentrated on two subdivisions, which the campaign answers with a mail drop and a sign push on the same streets.

Signs are not votes, but they are visibility, and placing and collecting them is a real logistical cost that eats volunteer hours when it runs from a group text. The map turns it into routes. The flags and opposition layers are the more valuable half: they are field intelligence that becomes targeting. A flag house is a likely voter for one side; a cluster of opponent signs is a block to answer. Both feed directly into walk lists, which is where door knocking turns visibility into contact.

Outdoor tracks placements and sightings. It is not an inventory or a print shop.

• It does not count stock, order signs, or print them. It records where signs are and who is responsible for them.
• It does not verify that a photo shows the sign at the pinned location; the photo is a record, not a proof.
• Flag precinct stamping depends on a voter on the county roll within about 330 meters; a flag on a rural road with no nearby voter lands in Unassigned.
• Opposition tracking here is physical signs and billboards only. Press and social monitoring is a separate feature, on the opposition and media monitoring page.
• Photo-op messages go out through the phone's own messaging app, not a texting platform, so there is no delivery tracking or reply capture.

Outdoor feeds and draws on the rest of the field stack:

• Volunteer mobile app: the Signs tab and photo-op capture.
• Block walking: flag-house lists become walks; a survey can carry a yard-sign ask.
• Precinct chair tools: chairs filter flags by their precinct and staff walks from the result.
• Volunteer coordination: sign placements and opposition reports count on the leaderboard.
• Search, lists, and tags: the list built from flags lives with every other saved list.