These signs aren’t about protest. They're a tongue-in-cheek call for unity.

Mary and John May represent a house divided. “My husband wants McCain, I want Obama," Mary May says. "So we’re always getting into arguments.”

Not angry disputes, though. Just animated disagreements. The biggest thorn is the war in Iraq. Mary thinks it can’t be won; John thinks victory is still possible. Both oppose abortion, but this time around Mary thinks the big picture is too complex to let one issue dictate her vote. A nurse by profession, she favors a national health plan or at least some radical change that will wipe out the profit margin for the insurance industry. “My husband’s still on the fence on that one,” she says.

So they thought they'd call it a draw -- and bust out some art supplies to add a little humor to the contentious presidential race.

It just so happens that the yard signs for both presidential candidates are the same shade of blue. The letters are even the same size. So Mary went down to the Obama headquarters and handed over $8 for a Barack sign. Then she hit up McCain’s office and shelled out another three bucks for the Republican’s placard.

Then she and her husband rediscovered their middle school art skills, cutting and pasting until well past their bedtime.

“We sat on the floor,” May says. “We decided to do it together. We were laughing so hard."

They came up with plenty of different combinations of the names at the top of the ticket, but settled for McBama and OCain. It's the same play on linguistics used by advocates of third party candidates, suggesting that there's little distinction between the two major parties. That was news to May, though. She's not trying to stir things up. If anything, she's trying to calm the storm with a call for compromise.

"We're not poking fun at the candidates," she says. "What we're saying is both parties have good points to make."

That hasn't protected the Mays from the larger political battlefield, though. This weekend, someone tore down her neighbor's Obama yard sign. Apparently, the vandal didn't catch the Mays' compromise language. The assailant flattened her sign, too -- McBama and all.