School board race up to seven candidates

When the filing deadline for the May Primary Election passed, only three people had filed for the three seats up for election on the Perkins County Schools board of education.

They included incumbent Jayson Bishop, Larry Pankonin and Edward Dunn. 

Since then, Dunn dropped out of the race but five more candidates have thrown their hat into the ring. 

Janet Lagler, Richard Thurin and Aaron Uehling were the first to file affidavits as write-in candidates. 

As a write-in candidate, their names do not appear on the ballot. Voters must then “write in” the respective candidate’s name to cast a vote for that candidate.

The ballot will include three write-in lines—one for each open seat. 

Lagler took her candidacy a step further by completing the petition process to place her name on the Nov. 3 ballot. 

To do so, she needed to get at least 188 verified signatures of registered voters on her petition for her name to appear.

The deadline for the petition process was Sept. 1. 

According to County Clerk and Election Commissioner Rita Long, the 188-signature threshold represents 20% of the votes the highest vote-getter received in the last election, which was 939.

In addition to Lagler, Long verified the signatures of two other petition candidates who met the Sept. 1 deadline—Holly Cornelius and Valerie Foster.

As a result, the five names that will appear on the ballot are Bishop, Pankonin, Lagler, Cornelius and Foster. 

While the deadline for the petition process has passed, Long said people interested in being a candidate through the write-in process have until Oct. 23 to file an affidavit.