But don’t whine about it.  Go on the offensive.

Campaigns and Elections magazine offers these helpful tips:

Earning media from yard sign thieves

A Google News search for “yard signs” returns 39,000 news results in just the last month. Long story short, the media loves to report on yard signs—including sign theft and vandalism. When a supporter recounts their story of a stolen sign, ask if you can include information about the theft in a press release. Once the campaign has accumulated a few similar stories, issue a press release decrying the actions of your opponent’s supporters, and offer quotes from your supporters about the purported thefts. With any luck, you’ll get a sympathetic news story.

Sign theft and volunteerism

Angry supporters are ripe for a volunteer ask, and yard sign theft is a powerful source for supporter anger. When a supporter calls the field office to share their story and ask for another yard sign, you’re likely to get a “yes” from a volunteer ask because they’re motivated by anger and want to reciprocate. In addition, many campaigns successfully trade a sign for a volunteer shift, which also works well.

Turning sign theft into dollars

Using the same process as above, small dollar contributions in exchange for a yard sign are common, and upset supporters will be quick to open up their wallets for a few dollars to replace their sign for virtuous reasons and spite alike.

Ben Donahower is a contributing editor to the free guide, Get Out The Vote To Win, and a campaign veteran. You can connect with Ben on Twitter at @iapprovethismsg.

While text-message contributions open up a new way for campaigns to reach out to voters and accept funds, there are hurdles.

“Maryland and California have allowed text-message contributions for state-level candidates. Maryland hasn’t held a statewide race since it changed its rules and in California, party officials have complained that cell providers haven’t offered the service.

“Other problems around collecting political donation via a text message include:

• The donations are not forwarded to the campaign until well after the billing cycle. This is no good if a campaign needs their funds right away to buy ads or support GOTV efforts.
• The donations are only tagged with the donor’s cell number. Not their name, address, occupation and employer as required by the FEC. Telecommunications companies are going to have to change their policy and provide far more information about donors to make the FEC happy.

“Political fundraisers have ways to get around these problems such having donors send a text and then having a phone bank call the prospect back for her donor and credit card info,” writes Nilsson.

“Will the FEC let campaigns process donations via text? I believe the FEC would like to provide this option. Their current stance is to embrace technology so more people can be involved in politics. The problem is that they need the mobile carriers to play along and provide information on the donors so you don’t have donors going over their limits.

“Campaigns also have to be comfortable with waiting 35-plus days for their donations. This means text donations will not be attractive to campaigns come October or even September. The mobile carriers have to be concerned about chargebacks, too. What if they pass a donation on to a candidate and the donor changes her mind or didn’t understand that her text was incurring a donation on their mobile phone bill? Moreover, the carriers will have a difficult time getting their money back from a campaign that has lost and closed its doors.”

There are also services allowing you to send text messages and emails to voters on their cell phones, offering Libertarians a low-cost way to reach voters.

Look in to them.

Go here to read the full article.