I know that Peter was really curious to see how local elections in the US run. I am sure that there are a lot of variations around the country, but I am more than happy to share the process I am going through (for as long as I am goign through it!).

Today, I stopped off at town hall to drop off my nomination papers. Once I declared my candidacy, I had to pcik up these papers so I could go around to get signatures supporting the possibility of having my name on the ballot as a candidate. The number of names you need varies based on the position you are running for. In Rhode Island, those running for the school committee, which is usually a townwide district, have to get 50 signatures.

That definitely does not sound like a lot of people to sign, particularly since most people are willing to sign your papers since it does not guarantee they will vote for you. It just means that they think everyone should have a chance to run.

One of the challenges of getting signatures is that they are only valid if they match the voting list in the district. That means they have to sign (and print) their names legibly in the same way they are registered to vote. That means, they have to use their middle initial or name if that is how they are listed for the voting lists. They also have to use the correct address. That means if they have moved without changing their address on the registry, they will end up being invalid since they likely will put down their new address.

As a result, it is a good idea to get extra signatures. I ended up getting 77. I figured I would turn them in today to give the town's Board of Canvassers a chance to review the signatures. They will contact a candidate if they are short signatures. Since the papers don't actually have to be turned in until Friday, it would give me some extra time to get more signatures if it was needed.

The good news is they did not call today so I am now and official candidate! When I go to vote, I will have a chance to vote for myself for school committee! That is going to be so cool!

I have also been doing a bit of research. In RI, our Board of Elections have posted the results of all the elections over the past decade or so. I decided I could take some time to visit the site and review the results of the school committee elections. I thought it could help give me an idea of how many votes I would need to win. Even though we have 11,000 registered voters here in Burrillville, it looks like you really don't need a ton of people to vote for you to win. I am guessing that it is due to traditionally low turnout. People vote for the big things, but tend to lose interest the further along they get in the ballot.

So, based on the past results, I am thinking that I would only need about 550 votes or so to win a seat. That number might be a little lower since there are so many candidates to dilute the voting pool. Of course, there might be a lot more people voting because of the teacher contract issues we have here in town. More people definitely have an interest in what is goign on. So, now it is just a matter of time to see if I win.