I want to apologize for doing so little blogging this week. This was a busy week when it came to kicking off the campaign. I mentioned that I filed my declaration paper last week. Well, that gave me 10 days to file some campaign financing paperwork to stay on the right side of the ethics laws!

I have to say that sorting through that was enough to make me want to reconsider running. The paperwork is so freaking confusing and there is pretty much no guidance for freshmen campaigners in small-level elections that don't hire campaign managers! No wonder so few people outside of the establishment want to get involved. Fortunately, a good friend of mine stopped in at Dunkin' Donuts for about 2 hours last night to help me sort it all out. It now makes sense and I should be all set to make it through.

We were able to start picking up our nominating papers on Tuesday.. To actually be placed on the ballot, we have to get the signatures of 50 people living in the district, which is the whole town. They also have to be registered voters. The papers could be picked up that morning, but I forgot. The weird thing is that I took a wrong turn on my way to work on Monday morning. If I had kept going, I would have made it to Town Hall! Ray thinks I remembered subconsciously, but it wasn't enough to get me to follow through.

The good news is that I already have 56 signatures after just picking them up yesterday morning. The Democratic Party in town held a signing party, and I was invited even though the election for school committee is non-partisan. Everyone pretty much brings their papers and trades signatures. That filled me with the basic 50 signatures. You need to get more than 50 signatures in case some of them are not accepted because the individuals are not registered voters or signed the papers incorrectly. They have to sign exactly as their name is enterred into the voting rolls. I have until July 11 to get as many as I want. I know I would like to get at least 75. The cool thing is I still have to ask a lot of my friends and Ray's family to sign them. I can't ask any of my family because they all live in another town.

As for an update on the election itself, we already lost one candidate. She is a good friend of mine so I am sad to see her go, but it does mean that there is one less person vying for the three seats up for election. Now there are only 8 of us. I have heard that there might be another person out. What is surprising is that it would be one of the three incumbant candidates.

There does seem to be some question as to whether or not we will need to have a primary. If we do, it will be on September 9.

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