A colourful protest by an East York couple over a misplaced election sign has sparked an intense reaction — all over a piece of bad advice, they say. After Katie Jeanne and Dan Lovranski said an Elections Canada worker told them — incorrectly, at first — they could not throw out a sign for Toronto-Danforth’s Conservative candidate that had been placed on their front lawn without permission, the pair decided to get creative.“Don’t vote for →,” the couple wrote on one hand-painted poster they staked beside the offending sign on Sunday. “They placed their sign on our lawn without our consent,” they wrote on a second — both in big bold letters inside a yellow border, Honest Ed’s style. Lovranski then posted a picture of the display to Facebook. “Come by and take a selfie with our new renovations,” he wrote in the caption. That soon sparked an avalanche of divisive comments — more than 650 on Lovranski’s personal Facebook page, hundreds more in a separate Reddit thread — including several from people who shared similar stories and dozens more alleging he had put the sign on his own lawn in some kind of anti-Conservative stunt, an idea the radio host and podcaster called “ridiculous.” Reached by phone on Monday, Conservative candidate Zia Choudhary, a realtor who in 2018 ran for city council in Scarborough Centre, confirmed his campaign volunteers placed the sign on the couple’s lawn. They removed it Sunday afternoon shortly after seeing the photo on social media, Choudhary said. He said his volunteers reported they had received permission to place the sign while door-knocking in late May for the Oct. 21 vote. (Both Jeanne and Lovranski, who have lived at the home for almost 10 years, said they never met Choudhary’s volunteers in May. They added they do not want to display election signs on their lawn — “Even the party I support, it ...
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