The time has come for anyone thinking about running for one of the many offices open in this year’s May 20 Municipal Primary to go to the Voter Services Office to pick up a nominating petition and begin circulating them in the community to obtain the necessary signatures in order to be placed on the ballot.

The period for circulating petitions starts this week and runs through March 11.

Director of Elections Forrest Lehman reported that the number of people coming to his office for the petitions increased throughout the week last week.

“We first made all of the filing documents available on Monday, and there weren’t many people coming in immediately, but now that we’re getting toward the end of the week, we definitely had a lot of foot traffic and phone calls Wednesday, Thursday and today,” Lehman said last Friday.

Although people requesting petitions don’t have to say what office they’re seeking — although some do — they need to pick up the correct petition based on the number of signatures needed to get on the ballot.

“We need to give them the correct instructions and the materials can vary somewhat. For instance, if someone’s running for a city or a county or MDJ’s (Magisterial District Justice) office where the signature requirement is 100…they’re more likely to be using additional circulators,” Lehman said.

“So there are some differences in the materials we give out depending on what they tell us they’re doing. But someone could come in and say that they want a packet for a borough or township office, and if that’s all they want to tell us, then fine, they can have a packet. If they have more specific questions about running for office in a specific place, we’ll certainly answer those as well. But sometimes people don’t want to share all the details, or they may be picking up the materials on behalf of someone else,” he explained.

Although there have been elections where some of the offices in the smaller townships or boroughs have had no candidates, Lehman said that his office has been providing information on the Voter Services website in order to encourage people to become more engaged.

“Over the last few municipal election cycles, we started providing all of these documents on the Voter Services website. I think the first cycle in which we did that was 2019, possibly 2017, and we continued to get more hits on the website each time. I think in 2023 we had several hundred hits on the website to access petitions and the other documents.

“That’s something we don’t actually know until the end of the process a couple weeks from now, but that’s certainly an effort we’ve made to get the information out there so that people know what’s going to be on the ballot and can engage with it,” he said.

Later this month, a listing of the offices that will be on the ballot in May will be published in the newspaper, which will also give people a chance to decide if they want to run for those offices.

But, Lehman stressed, time is running out to make those decisions.

“The most important thing is that time is of the essence, because the dates are coming up right now. Now is the time. So if they have any interest in running for a local office, a borough, township office, school director, anything that’s on the ballot here in the primary, they need to be thinking about it immediately…it’s only those three weeks up until March 11,” he said.

“So if they hadn’t considered it at all, they need to start thinking about it now. And if they’ve been considering it but hadn’t quite made up their minds, they should make up their minds to go for it now, because the election calendar will move along and it will not wait for anyone,” Lehman said.

Although the beginning of the year is often a slow period for many offices, not so much for Voter Services, according to Lehman.

“We’ve been extremely busy all of January. I know people think of that as maybe being a slow time, since you just finished an election and you’re far away from the next one, but we’re always working on more than one election at a time,” he said.

“For municipal elections, we actually have a lot more administrative work to do because of petitions, because of campaign finance. This year, in January, we were sending out voter maintenance notices that are required under federal law. We were talking with all of our precincts about their staffing to see who’s staying and who’s coming back. We’re continuing to work on accessibility at polling places. We were getting the contract awarded for another group of 30 polling places that will go under construction in the spring,” he explained.

“It’s never Groundhog Day at voter services. There’s something new happening every day…The election calendar has its own quirks and you know that something comes up and then something else comes up and you spend your time keeping up with it, and then also trying to look ahead at the same time,” he added.

After all the nominating petitions are filed, the next date on the election calendar is March 19 when the casting of lots for ballot position occurs. This is to determine the order that names will appear on the ballot in contests where there is more than one candidate who sought the same party nomination for the same office.

The drawing will occur at noon in the third floor multi-purpose room of Third Street Plaza, 33 W. Third St.

The following offices are open this year:

Old Lycoming Township — Four supervisor positions. This year, two supervisor positions have been added. One of the new offices is for two years and one is for a four-year term. In addition to those offices, two other positions are open. One was made vacant by the resignation of David Shirn and will be on the ballot for a four-year term.

Muncy Borough — Mayor and three council seats. One is for two years to fulfill the term of Brooke M. Bishop who resigned last March.

Montoursville Borough — Mayor and three council seats.

Loyalsock Township — Three supervisor seats. One is for two years to fulfill the term of Marc Sortman who was elected county commissioner.

Jersey Shore Borough — Mayor and five council seats. One is for a two-year term made vacant by the resignation of Sean M. Simcox.

Hughesville Borough — Mayor and three council seats.

East Lycoming School District — Four board seats. One in each of the three regions.

Jersey Shore Area School District — Four board seats. One each in Regions 1 and 2 and two in Region 3.

Loyalsock Township School District — Four board seats

Montgomery Area School District — Five board seats. Two in Region 1; two in Region 2; and one in Region/. 3.

Montoursville Area School District — Four board seats. One each in Region 1 and two in Region 3

Muncy School District — Five board seats. Two in Muncy Borough; one in Muncy Creek; and two in Muncy Township.

South Williamsport Area School District — Five board seats. Two in Region 1; two in Region 2; and one in Region 3.

Williamsport Area School District — Five board seats.

Lycoming County controller — Even though this year is an election for municipal offices, the office of Lycoming County controller is on the ballot for a two-year term due to the resignation of former Controller Krista Rogers last month. Nikki Gottschall, who had been deputy controller under Rogers, has been serving as the acting controller until someone is chosen by voters in November. Then in 2027 the controller position will be on the ballot for a whole new four year term along with other county offices that would normally appear that year.

Ballot Questions: Four townships — Cascade, Gamble, Mifflin and Porter — have filed to put a question on the ballot to authorize games of chance. Third party voters will be eligible to vote in the primary, although they will have a different ballot that has only the question on it. It will be a yes or no question. Everyone else will vote on it too, but the question will appear at the end of all the Democratic or Republican contests on the primary ballot.

Lehman suggested that county residents should refer to the Voter Services website — lyco.org/vote — to keep current with the list of candidates once petitions have been filed.

“That will be our record of who’s running for what until we actually have sample ballots,” Lehman said.